Flow
(words from first & last lines, Adrienne Rich, Poems Selected and New 1950–1974)
In the autumn of dominion, hands
take and make, ocean moving
the blood beating through sunlight.
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Call it need, call it will, living
tongues planted then lost — replaced
by leagues in the come and go. Illusionless
time, that colossus, zig-zags slowly through
its long room, swallows itself whole,
all things in its chopping-bowl.
This poem is part of a series, a prolonged challenge I set for myself. Vocabulary for each poem was taken from first and last lines of a poetry collection on my shelf. (The source appears beneath the poem’s title.) As I composed these, I allowed a couple diversions from the set vocabulary. I changed a verb tense or form of a word as needed. And on a few occasions, a word was added to complete a thought. I think of these as collage poems.
