Welcome to my April 2025 Great and Powerful Blogging from A to Z Challenge!

I’ve revealed my theme (A poem a day…with pictures), and of course, I am unashamedly blogging my theme letters on the fly.  So, here goes nothing!

So, without further ado, C is for … Cento.

A Cento is a poem made up of lines from other poems…Traditionally you should not add any of your own words to a Cento, but in the below poem I have added the odd preposition…it’s cheating, I know, but there you go. At least I’m admitting it…and I have cited all my sources so please feel free to read any of the original poems!

Almost a Cento

From Wanda Coleman, Nocturne; Silvia Plath, Resolve; Emily Dickinson, Life; H.D, Strophe; Robert Frost, Mending Wall; Mary Oliver First Snow; Ocean Vuong, Thanksgiving 2006; Rita Dove, The Stroke; HP Lovecraft, Sunset

Here i sweat
days humming because rhythm
makes persistence possible.

Coal fire burns
outside, little hedge leaves
become quite yellow

while on the stoop
of an old brownstone,
cigarette flares, then fades.

Who wins? Nations do not see.
Who falls? None observe.
Whose dying eyes no country regards?

He moves in darkness
as it seems to me, not
woods only. But shade of trees

glitter like castles of ribbons,
broad fields smolder with light,
the cloudless day is richer at its close.

I love you waits
with cold wings of a cold angel
shut up like cherry-buds not yet half in blossom.

Later he’ll say Death
stepped right up to shake his hand,
then squeezed until he sank to his knees.

——

Thanks for visiting my 2025 A to Z Challenge – Letter C.