I have a friend who’s a schoolteacher and sometimes gets frustrated at the lack of reception she gets from her students. She enjoys baking to compensate for this. So here’s a tanka sequence poem in her honour.

these copies repel
red ink tear-smudged offerings
life’s work down to this
where the dreams once so cherished
of touching lives transforming

the sticky mass hugs
kneading fingers pounding fists
beating back the doubt
relief reigns as nose eyes tongue
ravish the golden-brown bake

sorrows amidst joys
precariously balancing
walking life’s tightrope
through all-encompassing mists
and sparse slants of simmering sun