Yes, I’ve gone and done it again. Another found poem. This time instead of contrasting two poets together, I have taken one poet: Mary Oliver and pulled pieces from 8 different poems to bring together a brand new poem. I’ve taken no more than two to four lines from each poem. Each verse is from a different poem and in a few cases a pronoun has been changed. After this found poem, I cite the poems that were used to create it.
Every morning I walk softly and with forward glances
down to the ponds and through the pinewoods.
I have gone every day to the same woods,
not waiting, exactly, just lingering.
I have thought sometimes that
something – I can’t name it –
watches as I walk
Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, “Stay awhile.”
Later, lying half-asleep under
the blankets, I watch
while the doe, glittering with rain, steps
under the wet slabs of the pines
These are the woods I love,
where the secret name
of every death is life again – a miracle
Someday I’ll live in the sky.
Meanwhile the house of my life is this green world.
In the book of the earth it is written:
nothing can die.
~Mary Oliver~
One
The Place I Want to Get Back To
Beans
When I Am Among the Trees
Clapp’s Pond
Skunk Cabbage
Boundaries
Ghosts
i love how you do this! now i wanna walk in the woods…. ah, when the snow melts! LOL oxam
Excellent found poem. This works really well on its own. I patched together a poem of lines from Plath; it feels like a different process than found poetry. It requires more construction. A collage of sorts.
Oh WOW, I was just thinking I want to read what you did with the Plath poem, clicked on your blog and there it is! So you are the reason I have had Isadora’s scarves on my mind lately :)!
Seriously, that image of Isadora Duncan and scarves blowing wildly in the wind as she sat behind the wheel, has come to me more than once and just recently!
That image, the flowing scarf, has an admirable recklessness about it . . . makes me think of freedom and risks. Isn’t that strange when that happens, those repeated images, like recurring dreams. I am fiddling with my blog right now…I’ll put that poem back up again.
I love the title of your blog “Soul Clap It’s Hands and Sing”
Thanks! It’s from a Yeats poem, “Sailing to Byzantium.”
Gorgeous poem… And so cool that it arrived/was sent at 11:11 AM
Sent from my iPad
Sooo beautiful, Bethie!
yes a found poem, so very lovely, bless mary oliver :)
Alida! Did not know you read my blog! Yes, when I schedule them, as opposed to post immediately, I always do the time with numbers that line up. :)
Thank you so much, Janene and “dadirri7”, for extending your appreciation here! As I re-read the poem, I thought — surely, Mary Oliver would cringe at this. But re-reading it after your comments, I reflected on it again, and she might rather like it!