After an unseasonably chilly weekend with some misty drizzle and some sunshine while we were out gallivanting in Indian Springs State Park in Flovilla, Georgia and having shrimp and gouda grits at Yahola Creek for the Kentucky Derby party, we are back to the weekday work routine of a mundane Monday. I can’t help considering the similarities of the Derby for a horse to the impending retirement of everyday people everywhere, looking forward to grazing in the green pasture without running the race in all the trained and prescribed ways of riders jockeying them into position, running the never-ending course to finish first in their own Golden Tempo.
I was thrilled to see history made Saturday with the first female trainer of a Kentucky Derby winner wearing the color of the day – the hope for the run for the roses of red – as she tearfully approached the ring and took her place in the annals of time, celebrating her moment as the hearts of all women everywhere cheered her from the stands and living rooms throughout this great country and all around the world. Ada Limon’s famous poem How to Triumph Like a Girl is not lost on a day like this, the poem itself inspired by the running of the horses when the poet lived in Kentucky.
Ears up, girls, ears up! – Ada Limon
And for today, here is another favorite female poet – Lucille Clifton – whose poetry I’ve used to create a cento like those I wrote in March, using a line from different poems to form an entirely new one.
Wild Country
live where you can
be the one that understands
it is home and you know it
but listen
it is wild country here
there will be no peace
listening for the bang of the end
Taken from poems in this order: eyes; defending my tongue; ways you are not like Oedipus; to my friend, Jerina; eve thinking; lucifer understanding at last; the beginning of the end of the world
Common Threads 