03-31-2021, 05:51 AM
Very powerful piece, Tim.
Knot has some really good ideas, especially starting and ending with "I think".
I took the liberty to do a full scale edit and I feel like I hijacked your poem. My edit retains most of your original wording, yet I rearranged it to form quatrains. I wouldn't have done it if I didn't really, really like your poem:
Reliquary
I think I will make a cedar box
sealed with copper nails:
a place for what I found
when I cleaned out your car.
I had come across a book-
Rayuela; it looked left out
in the rain, fallen into a toilet
swollen, warped, stained.
I started to toss it out
but instead thumbed through it
to find hundreds of pressed flowers
hiding every 50 pages or so.
They were all the same type
now almost transparent white
like bizarre squashed insects.
I knew them from photos you'd sent.
Now Rayuela has become a relic
of your passage, the touch
of your fingers preserved
a 100 times over.
I think I will build the shrine
out of limestone and cedar
in the oak grove we cleared together.
Finally, I will have a place to pray.
Knot has some really good ideas, especially starting and ending with "I think".
I took the liberty to do a full scale edit and I feel like I hijacked your poem. My edit retains most of your original wording, yet I rearranged it to form quatrains. I wouldn't have done it if I didn't really, really like your poem:
Reliquary
I think I will make a cedar box
sealed with copper nails:
a place for what I found
when I cleaned out your car.
I had come across a book-
Rayuela; it looked left out
in the rain, fallen into a toilet
swollen, warped, stained.
I started to toss it out
but instead thumbed through it
to find hundreds of pressed flowers
hiding every 50 pages or so.
They were all the same type
now almost transparent white
like bizarre squashed insects.
I knew them from photos you'd sent.
Now Rayuela has become a relic
of your passage, the touch
of your fingers preserved
a 100 times over.
I think I will build the shrine
out of limestone and cedar
in the oak grove we cleared together.
Finally, I will have a place to pray.