Monday, October 05, 2015

Lewis and Clark in Idaho

Bit by bit, I am going through a flat box of flat things I had set aside to use in collages.
This is when I was going to make collages, 
on the model of my mother and so many other artists.
Some things I have thrown out. (It is becoming clearer and clearer to me that
I don't really like the glue factor involved in collaging; 
it is at once too messy and too permanent.)
Today, this orange-belted personage (by one of my grandchildren, but unsigned)
fell across this map of part of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, et voila!
A simple position adjustment was all that was needed,
And a whole new world opens out before me. . .


There is a poetic "form" called a cento.
It is made from lines of other poems.
I am not really sure this is a good idea, either,
but here is one as an example. 
Try it yourself; it is harder
than it looks.


Wolf Cento

Very quick. Very intense, like a wolf
at a live heart, the sun breaks down.
What is important is to avoid
the time allotted for disavowels
as the livid wound
leaves a trace leaves an abscess
takes its contraction for those clouds
that dip thunder & vanish
like rose leaves in closed jars.
Age approaches, slowly. But it cannot
crystal bone into thin air.
The small hours open their wounds for me.
This is a woman’s confession:
I keep this wolf because the wilderness gave it to me.


Simone Muench

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