Mixtape: Oldies (N) and New Goodies (K)

the shells of my mind: beach shells
we react violently, peacefully.
Finally.

over that water I may see
what one has never seen
(or imagined to see)
ever.

freedom:
egrets flying
love: not lying

please, stop crying.

–poem by Nina, illustrated by Kerfe

I found a bunch of my old poetry when I was cleaning.  A lot of it is in little sketchbooks with collages.  Thirty-five years ago I was both wordy and cryptic in my verse.  Probably even then I didn’t know what it meant, but there are images and phrases that still seem good to me.  So I thought to remake a few and send them off to Nina to illustrate.

Turns out Nina also has old poetry, so she sent a couple off to me for an exchange.  I don’t think she did any revisions on hers, but they were already short and clear and I had ideas for illustrations right away.  Any opportunity to draw shells…and I’ve just been reading about labyrinths.

And when Margo at Wordgathering posted her picture prompt this week, I was amazed to see how it echoed what I was doing for Nina’s poem.  Eerie.

Nina will post her illustration with my revised poem this morning…above is my original collage to accompany the original words.  Also cryptic.