☀️ Staying Power #178: "What Is Given" (reprise)

➕ a BIG DIG for you

Published on occasional Sundays, Staying Power is one of the newsletters of The Raft, the online community of author Phyllis Cole-Dai. We Rafters ride the river of life buoyed by music, poetry, and other arts, along with open spiritual practice. Most everything here is free, but patrons (paid subscribers) get some special perks as a gesture of gratitude.

Photo by Jaromír Kalina on Unsplash

WHAT IS GIVEN
Phyllis Cole-Dai

          a cento after May Sarton*

I woke to the meadow bright silver with frost
and brilliant sunlight through yellow leaves over the barn.
What if I cannot find myself inside it?

I suffer from the tearing up of roots.
Loss has made everything sharp.
Angers take the marrow of my energy.
I feel it draining out like sand.
I am forced to my knees again and again.

We are never far from death.
But there is nothing that we suffer
that does not hold the seed.
When help is needed, it is there.

This morning, two small miracles:
The first is light.
In a supreme moment of light,
one becomes aware of the sacred.
It is all a matter of getting
to the center of the beam,
to live in the changing.

Then, the delight of space to be:
a whole day before me, an open place,
a lovely shelter in which to welcome a guest—
real life, to be taken in and cherished.

Look long enough, with absolute attention,
at a flower, a stone, the bark of a tree, a cloud—
they are presences.
Something like revelation takes place.
Something is given.
Each holds the whole mystery.
(Look through me and find yourself.)

Whatever peace I know
rests in the wrinkled purple eggplant
standing up in a bowl surrounded by sweet potatoes.


*All lines from May Sarton’s Journal of a Solitude (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1973).

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About the poem

I first shared this poem with you back in December, 2022. It’s a cento.

As you may already know, a cento is a literary work, usually a poem, created exclusively from lines or phrases lifted from the work(s) of another author (or authors). You assemble the excerpts in whatever order you wish, thereby bringing to life a rich, new text. When doing this, you don’t have to worry about copyright violations. But it’s wise (and respectful) to credit your source(s)—e.g., list them at the end of the cento, or provide an annotated version of your work, line by line. (Here’s the annotated version of “What Is Given.”)

I created this cento from May Sarton’s Journal of a Solitude, a work of prose that has long lived on my bookshelf.

I began by perusing the passages I’d underlined while reading and rereading Sarton’s Journal over the decades. I jotted down words and phrases that especially “shimmered,” along with their page numbers. Finally, I started assembling a poem from those “shimmerings.”

Initially, I had no idea what the cento’s theme would be. I just let the process lead where it would.

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A Dig

Here on The Raft, a Dig is a surprise writing invitation. It invites you to “dig” deeper into the current of your own creativity and benefit from its flow. You’re welcome to tweak a Dig however you’d like. You can even respond in media other than the written word.

You never know when or where a Dig is going to pop up on The Raft. In that way, it’s sort of like a nudge from the Muse.

For this Dig, I encourage you to pull a book off your shelf and compose a cento of your own. Then, if you’d like, send me your finished cento, just for fun (phyllis@phylliscoledai.com).

I won’t critique your cento; I won’t even be able to comment on it, as I’ll be in the middle of a cross-country move at the time. But I’ll certainly read and appreciate your work.

If enough Rafters share a cento with me between now and the end of January, I’ll happily set up a “Cento Celebration” on Zoom for everybody to enjoy in mid-winter. How’s that sound?

The Gentle Nudge

• LAY A BLESSING STONE: Here. Or learn about our blessing-stone practice at this link.

• THURSDAY: Poetry Pick-Me-Up (Zoom, 12:00-1:00PM Central, at this link)

• UPCOMING: “Calming the Heart” patron bash with James Crews (Zoom, December 15, 6PM CT). Details here.