Under Birdsong [cento]

Pull on the layers of living like fine new garments
The world feels, for this moment, bathed in grace
Wild things do not tax their lives with forethought
The spring is signaled by birdsong
With the ruffling of throat feathers
Be the very hero of birds

Darling, you are part of this wild design
Remember the wind. Remember her voice
The breeze scatters the seeds
Carried by the surprise of its own unfolding
Love says, time to trust the wind
For just letting it go is what makes it stay

Citations:
Title: Mark Nepo, Under Birdsong

  1. Tamara Madison, Sequoia Sempervirens
  2. Tamara Madison, Behaving
  3. Wendell Berry, The Peace of Wild Things
  4. Neil Gaiman, After Silence: for Rachel Carson
  5. Mary Oliver, Ravens
  6. Al Young, For Poets

  7. Chelan Harkin, Whirling Festival
  8. Joy Harjo, Remember
  9. Neil Gaiman, After Silence: for Rachel Carson
  10. John O’Donohue, Fluent
  11. Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, One Resilience
  12. Lao Tzu (translated by Ursula K. LeGuin), Soul Food

The Day Thirty prompt is to write a cento. A cento is a poem made up of lines taken from other poems.

 Photo by Joshua J. Cotten courtesy of Unsplash

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13 thoughts on “Under Birdsong [cento]

    1. Thanks, Kamal. I have a program that came with a pic-to-painting app and I used the watercolor filter because I liked the colors. This was a fun prompt to work on. Thanks for stopping by.

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    1. No, I had never done a cento before. I haven’t memorized those lines, but I do keep an extensive collection of poems I love, both online and in print. These lines were a mixture of the poems I like particularly about nature. The image was a copyright free photo from Unsplash.com and I put it through a watercolor painting filter using PaintShop Pro. It turned out better than I could have painted! Thanks for stopping by, Carol.

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