Karen Greenbaum-Maya Archives | U n l o s t (unlostjournal.com)
The cento is a fun form and something of a Rorschach test for the poet. You pull out some other writers' work and take lines that strike you, in no particular way. Then you arrange them so that the order makes sense to you. I love found objects and found poems anyhow, and when I saw that line of Roethke, I knew what to do. I have included this one in my tribute to my husband, The Beautiful Leaves, which Bamboo Dart Press will publish in August 2023.
The Ballad of the Clairvoyant Widow
--a cento of lines of Christine Gosnay, Michelle Brittan Rosado, Russell Salomon, and Theodore Roethke
Slow, slow as a fish she came,
A green angel swaying branches.
The wide streams go their way.
She went in slowly, and found him.
She watched the river wind itself
away.
Everything undoes itself.
He woke with mountains in his knees.
She saw her father shrinking in his
skin.
She thought a bird and it began to
fly.
The light cried out, and she was
there to hear.
The wings have fallen off. The arms
too.
It was as if she tried to walk in
hay.
Once she knew how to run.
She came to the western river,
breathed as if moving a hand toward
a candle.
The sleep was not deep but waking was
slow.
The outline of one is inseparable.
