Shield with Owl Figure

 

This gilded and silvered copper disk reveals

outstretched wings and grasping talons,

inlaid eyes of shell and turquoise,

light reflecting off contrasting movement.

The Moche (the Mohicas) flourished

six centuries: from Nepena River Valley

perhaps as far north as Piura River.

There was no tradition of writing –

the precise significance of owls 

at the burial site of Loma Tegra

is unknown. (Owls prey, fly at night ...)

Of mystical or divine power,

Owl is my guardian on my left side.

(On my right I have Serpent.)

Written for  Poets and Storytellers United at Friday Writings #234: Words for Images, this is largely an erasure poem taken from the long text about this artwork at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The erasing leaves me with some quite big chunks of sequential words from the original and also qualifies as a found poem. Only the last two lines, italicised to differentiate them from the rest, are my own words. (I did also place the third line of the third verse a little out of its original order.  It makes more sense this way in this context – and I so wanted to use it, for the wonderful sounds of the words as they roll over the tongue.)

Image and text are in public domain, open access.

Video

 

little movement … near silence …

some melodic bird song …

a fly comes and goes … 

I imagine 

the temperature of the sun,

the feel of that light breeze

in my hair

Image copyright © Denis Robinson 2025

This is a textu (160 characters including title and spaces) and also a found poem / erasure poem. My brother Denis posted a video on his facebook page of leaves moving. (See, above, the still screenshot.) The first verse of this is taken from his words about it; the second from my comment on it.

I'm sharing this with Open Link Night #395 at dVerse, where the optional mini-prompt is letter writing, including modern digital equivalents – posts and comments on facebook being one form of the latter.

?

It Gave No Cause

(Elegy for Leonard Cohen)

The end came 

with a fall in the night:

sudden, unexpected, 

peaceful.

Busy growing frail, 

working diligently,

he felt the window 

getting narrower.

His working pace was slow,

polishing for many years.

A new set of tracks

the morning he died:

spiritual wisdom;

dark, self-effacing wit.

( ... after the event,

not to know ... )

NaPoWriMo 2025, Day Twenty-Nine. 

Prompt: to write a poem that takes its inspiration from the life of a musician, poet, or other artist. This is a found poem, in the form of an erasure of the article, 'For Leonard Cohen, the End Came With a Fall in the Night' by Ben Sisario, published in The New York Times, Nov. 16 2016. Rather than 'find' and string together single words in a sea of erasures, I've used whole phrases from the text – though in a way that sometimes subtly alters fine shades of meaning.

Also sharing with Poets and Storytellers United for Friday Writings #196: Hello Fall! Strictly speaking, this is off-prompt, but the winding down at the end of a life can be considered autumnal. 

Following Blackout

Following Blackout

Be an uncrushed flower!

Burst into constellations of dance!

Love can be a monster, or not …

the choice is always yours.

Written for Weekly Scribblings #57 at Poets and Storytellers United, where Magaly invites us to 'scribble new prose or poetry inspired by one (or all 3) of the following lines (which are blackout poems, created by her): 1. Be an uncrushed flower. 2. Burst into constellations of dance. 3. Love can be a monster, or not. Feel free to use the exact words, or not—the choice is always yours.'

As you see, this is basically a straightforward found poem, found in the above instructions – with a bit of erasure to create title and last line. Which seems kinda appropriate for this prompt ... as well as, perhaps, the lazy way to approach it. (I can't help it; it just jumped out at me when I read the prompt, and would not be silenced.)

[Is it bad when the process notes are very much longer than the poem?]

Plan was ... (variations on a theme)

Plan was …

(1)

Walked this morning
to the quarry,
over the crocodile track,
but took the wrong path.

(There was another way down
but that was steep
and the long grass
hid holes.)


(2)

the sign
was wrong
was down

I headed
up


The prompt for Weekly Scribblings #51 at Poets and Storytellers United is to revisit any Weekly Scribblings prompt from the past year. I like to play with found poems, so that's the one I chose (#43).

I am friends on facebook with several in this community, including Marja, and recently enjoyed some wonderful photos she posted with this text:

'Walked this morning to the quarry, over the crocodile track, Kennedys Bush track, to sign of the Bell Bird. Plan was to go down into Governors Bay but took the wrong path. There was another way down but that was steep and the long grass hid some holes. Not good for the clumsy so I headed for Sign of the Kiwi where William picked me up.'

Her words, too, captured my imagination. In them I found both of the above poems, which I see as variations on a theme. The method of composition was somewhere in between the classic found poem, which reproduces a fragment of text verbatim (or at least very closely) and the classic erasure, which uses widely separated words and phrases to create something with an entirely different meaning from the original.

 

Notes from the Log of the SS Enterprise?

Notes from the Log of the SS Enterprise?

The eye of calm is roughly surrounded.

High clouds show up brightly

clear or obscured by stark mechanics,

ragged intensity rapidly intensifying.

Prone to fluctuations,

large eyes become sustained.

Thunderstorms form and gather.

Rainbands start rotating, updrafts drop.

Outside the forming eye,

pushing air flows inward to descend.

Many aspects remain a mystery.

A ring ejects excess air.

A clear simple drop in speed –

rising and sinking columns of air

may strengthen and organize, 

"choked" partially, quickly abandoned.

The moat between eyeballs 

changes the distance. Filamentation zones

near any vortex are pronounced strong. 

Visible rotational suction may be else.

Unusual cyclones remain stationary.

Storm phenomena spawn 

individual convective cells.

Tornadic landfall can allow circulations.

It is a curve with height, resembling 

a dome smallest at the bottom.

An absent maximum, typically,

wavelengths from space.

An aircraft flying is a common mistake,

especially to exit the violent opposite.

Polar lows are relatively warm.

Water can feature deep winds.

At the boundary of different

are extratropical classic severe clouds.

Low systems can be very hazardous.

The fastest winds are multiple.

All are theorised to have doppler velocity.

Observations on the south pole of Saturn

display tens of kilometers high spacecraft:

locked, clearly defined, not previously seen.

On any planet, observe a great red spot, 

very large, on both poles. The mission: 

to have a dipole eye structure. See also 

portal, radius, maximum wind. Surge!

Written for Weekly Scribblings #44: Eye of the Hurricane at Poets and Storytellers United. 

Uninspired, I tried an erasure poem taken from the Wikipedia article Eye (cyclone). (Hurricane, cyclone and typhoon are all words for the same kind of tropical storm, called different names in different places.) I had fun arriving at a lot of scientific-sounding pretentious nonsense, then the mention of Saturn gave me a different perspective as to what I had actually found.

Image: Public Domain. 
Hurricane Isabel as seen from the International Space Station showing a well-defined eye at the center of the storm. Courtesy of Mike Trenchard, Earth Sciences & Image Analysis Laboratory, NASA Johnson Space Center. From his vantage point high above the Earth in the International Space Station, Astronaut Ed Lu captured this broad view of Hurricane Isabel. The image, ISS007-E-14750, was taken with a 50 mm lens on a digital camera.

Worried Clocks Carry the Dream

Worried Clocks Carry the Dream

Worried clocks carry the dream within my body,

my body defiant, disbelieving the dream –

the dream someone else’s possibility, ending you.

You ask that person: Be the mother that is under, a gift. 

A gift! Accept!

Accept our life start, that is unavoidable –

unavoidably working towards wanting,

wanting a little window into connection, focus.

Focus on the fullness to be true; further open.

Further open a kind allow.

Allow whispering; process challenge.

Challenge this insight happening,

happening into the pleasure.

Pleasure sending sensations, wonder, tangled endings.

Tangled endings just beautiful vibrations.

Vibrations, harnessing, feel like the ocean –

the ocean to bring. Begin!

Begin with their beauty.

I wrote this for my own prompt, Weekly Scribblings #43: Found Poems and Erasures, at Poets and Storytellers United. I am quite good at other kinds of found poems, not so good at erasures, so I thought that's what I should try. Hmmm, perhaps not!  I really don't think I have the knack. (But then, I admit I didn't spend a serious amount of time on it. I didn't even actually erase the text surrounding the words I chose.) I only got it to make some kind of almost-sense by repeating the one or two words at the end of every line as the beginning of the next line. Below are the source materials: pages from a give-away New Agey magazine which is basically advertising various practitioners. The first attempt didn't take me very far, so I turned to another page and did some more.

Interestingly enough, what this poem does is allow me a window into my own subconscious. Recently I've been thinking about my relationship with my mother – it was her birthday the other day – wishing it had been easier, closer. As a child, I thought her very beautiful but didn't find her warm and cuddly. I felt she was always trying to make me conform, be something I wasn't. I've come to think I may have misunderstood her, and wish I could go back and make it all different. I can find these threads in the poem, so one day I might, if I choose, rewrite it to be more readily understandable to others.

Of Roots, Cut Grass ...

Of Roots, Cut Grass ...

On a high plain in Kashmir

surrounded by mountains,

in charge of a flock,

he wanders them here and there

across this changing plateau.

The days are hot, 

the nights are cold.

Moving through the old realms,

is one bell enough?

Who marches at the head?

Evening. Men 

who had promised 

craftsmanship 

sat, talked, refilled glasses,

looked out the window. 

He never speaks. 

The animals twitch with energy,

smell of death,

confront, adapt,

flow where they will.

Erasure poem, excerpted and rearranged from two short pieces of fiction: Hazel’s Haircut by Rob Swannock Fulton and Some Roots of Grass, author unknown.

Shared at Poets United's PoetryPantry #433

The Way Opened

The Way Opened

Below a pelt of thick, peaty soil

the smells of aromatic spices

mingle with oriental floral,

trees straining under the weight

of red and golden apples.

Nine mountains to the north, nine dragons

protect the island and vibrant harbour.
With the arrival of this thought
in the orange glow of the morning sun,

the departure of a hunger.

An erasure poem using lines from two pieces of fiction, The Chinese Way by Irene Tai and She Opened the Box by Rab Swannock Fulton, rearranged and intermingled.

Shared with Poets United's Poetry Pantry #432