Following the Muse

I was working on the Thanksgiving theme and found a beautiful poem.

ORIGINAL POEM

AS IF TO DEMONSTRATE AN ECLIPSE
by Billy Collins

I pick an orange from a wicker basket
and place it on the table
to represent the sun.
Then down at the other end
a blue and white marble
becomes the earth
and nearby I lay the little moon of an aspirin.

I get a glass from a cabinet,
open a bottle of wine,
then I sit in a ladder-back chair,
a benevolent god presiding
over a miniature creation myth,

and I begin to sing
a homemade canticle of thanks
for this perfect little arrangement,
for not making the earth too hot or cold
not making it spin too fast or slow

so that the grove of orange trees
and the owl become possible,
not to mention the rolling wave,
the play of clouds, geese in flight,
and the Z of lightning on a dark lake.

Then I fill my glass again
and give thanks for the trout,
the oak, and the yellow feather,

singing the room full of shadows,
as sun and earth and moon
circle one another in their impeccable orbits
and I get more and more cockeyed with gratitude.

BLACKOUT POETRY

I decided to do a modified version of Blackout Poetry after long.

In this format, you pick a poem or piece of prose, delete or blackout certain words and lines, and create a poem of your own with the chosen words.

Giving due credit to the original poet is mandatory.

I picked up the first line of each stanza (I cheated a bit) and this poem emerged.

I pick an orange from a wicker basket
I get a glass from a cabinet,
and I begin to sing
so that the grove of orange trees
and the owl become possible,
Then I fill my glass again
singing the room full of shadows.

The muse is making itself felt now, so I do another version by picking lines at random.

I sit in a ladder-back chair,
a benevolent god presiding
for this perfect little arrangement,
for not making the earth too hot or cold
not making it spin too fast or slow

not to mention the rolling wave,
the play of clouds, geese in flight,
and the Z of lightning on a dark lake.

as sun and earth and moon
circle one another in their impeccable orbits

---

Well, frail human that I am… I can’t resist the temptation to play God on a screen and fill it with my own thoughts. The muse has truly kicked off now …. gratitude to the original poet, who gave me a prompt.

God, you have done it all right so far
but lost control on your Frankensteins
they march ahead with vigour and glee
creating replicas of themselves and thee
creatures of research and creativity
to whom they might yield all controls
algorithms, robots, trolls and scrolls

Is it the same with you, oh God?
Are you relinquishing command?
creating new planets to replace the old
Are we an experiment gone wrong?
puppets acting on writer’s demand?
Was it by design or an error unknown?
You are entitled to revise your plan.

Can we find a better way to communicate?
With you, and powers unseen so far
Is there a way to rewind or mitigate
Impact of gargantuan mistakes?
Can you give us a chance to replicate
your original intent? or here we go
on journeys pre-ordained by you.

---

Open Link Night #351 at dVerse

RXC #308