China
off in the mist
the pacific between, —
undulating blue-green seas wave
good-bye.
The preceding poem was actually my first foray into the style known as cinquain. American Cinquain are poems of five lines, each with a specific syllable count, 2‑4‑6‑8‑2, influenced by Japanese tanka and haiku.
While I am by no means a master of this form, I can say that this is the one and only cinquain that I’ve written to date, and it was published on Amaze: The Cinquain Journal (online) in 2007. It later appeared in their print anthology.