I have returned from four days in Philadelphia at Pendle Hill attending a writing workshop called “A Room of Our Own Making.” I’m still processing, but I will say it was exactly what I needed to make a major decision about my life. That kind of weekend doesn’t come along very often.

I’ll likely return to that later, but for this post I am including my second draft of the found poem started last week in class. I worked on it during the weekend workshop, and here is the result:

I remember my first kiss.

Everyone said it was foolish

Their hue and cries scratched my cheeks

“Forget a summer-only love—

Anything real takes time.

Years. Decades. Centuries

to chip away the cheap plastic coating

and polish the platinum

that will sit proudly upon the shelf

of life.”

No. Not that one.

I remember the one that went beyond joy

and flutter-bys of bliss.

The one that broke my soul

shattering it into countless

silver pieces that slowly,

slowly floated skyward

until they became fine bits of crystal

in the night sky.

It was serendipity the day the spell was cast.

Indelible images

Taste

Madness

Light.

Somewhere lost in time

lies the past.

I snag glimpses of my lost world

I seek the new world

flowing beneath me like a subterranean river

cutting the rock smooth.

Wild memories don’t flow in straight lines

some circle, carving twisting patterns

others drift by like the first snow,

silent and somber and cold.

And some—some are yet to be made.

And all along I ask myself

Am I crazy?

But I’m not.

It’s the most profound mystery of all,

that first kiss,

that first encounter

with infinity.

*******************************************

What I’m wanting to do now is play with format– the blog isn’t putting in the spaces in the draft, but that’s ok. This might actually be a prose poem. Not sure yet. But I do know I want to move to a more visual element with it. This may become an art piece, or a vide0– haven’t made up my mind. The idea of the underground river has me wanting to incorporate some kind of movement.

So that’s where I am now. From here, I’ll jump into more kinesthetic waters, and the third draft will show my decision. In the meantime, ideas?