Robes of Resfeber

 

A Very Mary Variation 

 Here’s a QUADRUPLE Golden Shovel using four intertwined lines from Mary Oliver’s poems to form a vertical scaffold. They appear like this prior to my own writing (read each line from top to bottom, small devices turned sideways):

In         Over       She         All

The      The         Was        The

Robes  swamp   singing   way

Of         And         Her       To

The         The        Death    the

night     darkness    song    grave

Reading the six word lines vertically, the four lines come from the poems “Night Herons,” “White Heron Rises over Black Water,” “Red,” and “Honey Locust,” in that order. 

Robes of Resfeber

in mourning over her plans she anticipated with all

the heart of the adventurer she was, she cast the 

robes of resfeber into the swamp and began singing the way

of the solivagant and free-spirit; her path to

the trouvaille of the unplanned journey marked the death of

the

night cloaked in darkness and buried her song of despair deep in an unmarked grave