Tweetspeak Poetry has declared this July to be the month of the cento. I actually did one using Mary Oliver’s “American Primitive.” Because I own it.
(Thank you, Professor Ann Miller—gone but not forgotten).
MORNING AT GREAT POND
and the black river of loss
Disorder and astonishment
skirting the secret pools —
hunting water
sleeking along
day after shining day
I knelt and drank from that crumpled flow,
the blue of the sky falls over me
I want to flow out
spit through wet stones. And a pool
climbing up out of the wet cities —
barnacles and joy
such slick crossings, deep
in the swale — everything else
clean as holy water. Meanwhile
the ponds start dissolving
The crow calls: plunder!
the loose tons of water
What a holy and sensual splashing!
tilting through the water
the warm river of the I
the splash of his touch
and the wanderings of water.
this thick paw of my life
how I love myself at last!
Title: “Morning At Great Pond”
Line 1: “In Blackwater Woods”
Line 2: “The Plum Trees”
Line 3: “Climbing the Chagrin River”
Line 4: “Music”
Line 5: “The Sea”
Line 6: “Happiness”
Line 7: “Tecumseh”
Line 8: “A Meeting”
Line 9: “White Night”
Line 10: “Blackberries”
Line 11: “Little Sister Pond”
Line 12: “Humpbacks”
Line 13: “Crossing the Swamp”
Line 14: “Blossom”
Line 15: “Spring”
Line 16: “Skunk Cabbage”
Line 17: “Rain in Ohio”
Line 18: “A Poem for the Blue Heron”
Line 19: “Postcard from Flamingo”
Line 20: “Egrets”
Line 21: “Cold Poem”
Line 22: “Flying”
Line 23: “Fall Song”
Line 24: “August”
Line 25: “The Honey Tree”