Cento of Lines from Espaillat and Whitman

~ barbcrary

Cento of Lines from Espaillat and Whitman

The trouble with the dead is how we need them.
I do not talk of the beginning or the end.

I want to tell myself she is not you,
whose..roses scented [all] my early days.
I breathe the fragrance myself and know it,
[I] shall no longer…look through the eyes of the dead.

Love was never safe; it lives in danger,
[a] country heart anesthetized and mute.
Every atom of my blood formed from this soil,
clear and sweet is all that is…my soul.

The lines in italics are from the following poems by Rhina Espaillat: Cut Bait: Changeling; Gardening and”Find Work.” The unitalicized lines are from Song of Myself (1892 ed.), Parts 1-4.

 

 

 

Published by barbcrary

Barbara Crary is a retired school psychologist who lives outside Philadelphia, PA. She started writing poetry several years ago and often writes in short forms such as haiku. She enjoys the discipline of creating found poetry using words selected from existing texts. Barbara was a contributing poet to the collection, “Whitmanthology: On Loss and Grief and has also written for Silver Birch Press, Visual Verse and Pennsylvania Bards.

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