Desiree Remick

 

Wild Honey

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Exactly at six every evening I go

into the garden to wait for rain.

If only we could lose ourselves

in the wreckage of the moment! Forget

the double sadness I’d sealed away.

Evening expires in a yawn of stars

and for hours we meet no one else.

Your lips, swollen from whistling,

blaze. The hurt we feel is delicate—

all for ourselves and all for nothing.

I won’t promise anything. I am a magic

that can deafen you like a rainstorm or a well.

 Around us, wild thyme ached in mauve.

Now we have a bouquet of stone roses;

 I will marry this clump of flowers—

it’s just how we imagined lavender.

Night rests like a ball of fur on my tongue.

The stars crumble, salt above eucalyptus fields

is closer to contrition than anything: the wild honey

and the spirit hissing away…

If only you were bright enough to touch!

 

Lord, how it feels

to burst out like a rose.

 

 

Source and Method: This cento was created out of lines taken from poems in two different volumes by Rita Dove: Selected Poems (1993) and Grace Notes (1989). In order: “Dog Days, Jerusalem” (lines 1-2), “Ozone” (lines 3-4), “First Kiss” (line 5), “The Boast” (line 6), “Five Elephants” (line 7), “This Life” (line 8), “Champagne” (lines 9-10), “Dedication” (lines 11-12), “The Ants of Argos” (line 13), “The Sahara Bus Trip” (line 14), “The Kadava Kumbis Devise a Way to Marry for Love” (line 15), “Grape Sherbet” (line 16), “Adolescence—II” (line 17), “Corduroy Road” (line 18), “Mississippi” (line 19), “A Father out Walking on the Lawn” (line 20”, and “Three Days of Forest, a River, Fire” (lines 21-22).

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Desiree Remick is a student at Rogue Community College in Southern Oregon. She loves nature, fencing, and the written word, and she aspires to be a professor in the field of creative writing.

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