Turn
(words from first and last lines, Heather McHugh, A World of Difference)
by Lavina Blossom
Evening. The light about to begin
tipping evergreens into
impressionist gold. Only a ghost
hold of the field, and the black cat
seeing what we cannot.
Here is a boy and an acre
of stars and planets. More.
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Space to fall through.
One day he will see that
Echo invented Always,
that Never hasn’t anywhere
to be. That things split away
from themselves.
What is a century? A word,
fire in a box that crackles.
Before we go away, brilliant
last minutes like this, a
feverish island of resistance.
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.
