#NewThisDay Writing From My Photo Stream

Milkweed

Seeds of Letting Go

This morning in the field I listened as I walked to the voice of Leonard Cohen in a recent interview with the New Yorker. The poet and musician no longer walks this earth, but he seeded the world with his voice, his art. On the edges of the meadow the milkweed seeds lifted, exceptionally lovely, in a light breeze. Last spring the milkweed buds popped pinkly into flower and soon sprang pods, lightest green and freshest moist, and soon after, they browned and dried, and soon enough split open. I made two needs from milkweed this morning: my slideshow of pictures of the milkweed cycling from spring to fall in all its stages. And this poem I "erased" from an article about milkweed by a naturalist whose writing I greatly admire. My spirit was seeded by both.

Seeds of Letting Go, An Erasure Poem

For Leonard Cohen

“the milkweed

After flowers
fruits form

out of the multitude
large—much larger

swell and orient upward

a gesture is full of seeds,
seeds large and light
feather-like

split open. as if
upward pointing
what is to
come—
”