a visit in mulberry summer

this is not something to be taken lightly;
a small final song
of the velvety heart rolling
into the minor yawns of the earth

the palm on a fever-dream’s brow
i’ll call it joy, this,
silk of a fig
tendrils of ivy cast delicately into the spoon

the light glimmers in drifts
while above him the heavens wheel and his tongue
like a newly / discovered galaxy
a goldfinch kissing

bodies like moonflowers
lips and fingers blushed purple
the flush of flowers
see what it teaches you

my heart blasting a last somersault
a form of gratitude

Day 30 prompt: Today, I’d like to challenge you to write a cento. This is a poem that is made up of lines taken from other poems. If you’d like to dig into an in-depth example, here’s John Ashbery’s cento “The Dong with the Luminous Nose,” and here it is again, fully annotated to show where every line originated. A cento might seem like a complex undertaking — and one that requires you to have umpteen poetry books at your fingertips for reference — but you don’t have to write a long one.

For my last poem of NaPoWriMo, I turn to Ross Gay. I attended a poetry reading of his several years ago and fell in love with the candor of his poems, especially “to the fig tree on 9th and christian” and “to the mulberry tree” which to me bursts of summer energy. The weather today is bright and beautiful, and I want to write a poem that depicts that kind of energy so using Ross Gay’s Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude was only fitting. I love being able to pull things from my own poetry collection to use from, and I’m so glad I bought the book after I heard him read! Today’s been a good literature day overall — I’ve just added three new (but old) books from classic poets into my collection after a satisfying hunt at the local library’s spring book sale, including Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, and Sappho!

My passion for poetry continues to burn strong, and I’m so very glad that NaPoWriMo has re-ignited my passion for writing my own poems as well. I’ll have a full write-up and reflection of NaPoWriMo in it’s own dedicated post, coming up later next month. Thanks so much to all of you for joining me on this journey and writing and reading poetry together! It’s been an absolute pleasure; I’m so thankful to find an online community that cherishes poetry just as much as I do. To our best writing; see you next year!