THIS WOMAN'S LIFE

Photo/painting by S. Auberle

THIS WOMAN'S LIFE

(a cento)

How did we get to be old ladies--my grandmother's job--

when we were the long-legged girls?

~  Hilma Wolitzer

It's a pickle, this life.

All day the stars watch from long ago.

The brightness of the day

becomes the brightness of night

and I do not regret the passage of time.

Sometimes a moment is a monument--

an old moon, lying akilter

among a few pale stars,

twenty six willows on the banks of a stream

to which the small hum of bees wing.

Everything about you, my life

is both make believe and real,

but the future has arrived

and it is not unbearable.

I almost glimpse what I was born to.

The earth, with others on it, turns in its course.

~  mimi

for those of you unfamiliar with a cento--the word comes from the Latin for "patchwork" and it simply means a poetic form which consists of taking one line from a selection of poems and combining them in a new way.  Only one line per poet is allowed...it is a recognized form, first used by Homer and Virgil, so it's good enough for me!