Monday, April 25, 2016

FPR #24: WHAT YOU ARE NOW

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This filling in an erasure poem is Day 24's prompt from Found Poetry Review. I know it's a day late, but I was out all day running around Vancouver making visits yesterday and was a little too tired to get it done when I got home.

I accidentally borrowed an erasure poem that appeared on this very site a couple of days ago as part of Day 21's prompt, found via a Google search. I took a screen shot of the erasure, converted it to a jpg so I could put it here, and only when I looked it up to get the link did I realize it was from here. I didn't read the original text from which it was taken. So thanks, NaPoWriMo! My poem's below the erasure. The words in bold are from the source poem. How I wound up in a cemetery is anyone's guess. 


What You Are Now

I grew up thinking it
impossible there were thorns 
on all the roses that every spring burst forth, 
a great expanse of lavish blooms.
The white, the crimson, the tiny pink ones 
someone left in a heap on the ground
I picked up to take to the cemetery
first time I visited you there,
the utter loveliness of the still, green slope 
surrounded by trees that will hold your spirit
through the ages, more than ever the ground could, 
your friends pale, wrapped in newly discovered grief, 
this gatherinmy chosen familysilent, sombre.
You are the roots of trees, 
the aromatic bark, the sturdy boughs, 
the rose and its simple thorn, 
 sure I am of this as I am of anything
as I stand here, bereft, wondering 
what inspired yoto leave this way,
what I, what any of us, 
could have said to make you stay.

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1 comment:

Unknown said...

A very moving, visual poem. Reminds of Elizabeth Bishop; a pleasure to read.