The sun was warm, but the wind was chill
between our thoughts.  He holds our breath.

(sounds of water)

Oh yes, that kind of thing could start again.

Let me not wander in a barren dream
that nothing cures.  An immense slackening ache,
in the unfinished sky with nothing to hold it,
lowly one day, no different from the others.

Well, I would like to make
all memory resolve itself in gaze.

The trees say,  Pull me: but the hand you stretch,
the afternoon sifted coolness,
is deep with song.

When I read Jane Dougherty’s response to Sue Vincent’s gate prompt(above), I immediately thought of “Hotel California“.  I had already decided to do a Cento Poem, which takes lines from other poets and strings them together to make a new poem.

I can’t explain completely my method for choosing these lines, except to say it involved a…