For my Father, Six Years After (A Cento Using Lines from David Baker’s Whale Fall)
We live in one time, but think in another.
We put flowers down, beside the one cut stone.
My father called
outside, calling all night long, in his voice,
Are you there?
The feeling in the breeze, inside the trees, we were feeling
what you call
a thing is seldom what it is.
This song and no other. Listen.
A whippoorwill, years distant
through the paneless glass
the last night of his mortal darkness.
It falls, as through blue breeze
of sea-wind-
warmed currents, loose galaxy,
the cool layers, the sifted light
and fell as stardust into his sleeping mouth
where he lay down and breathed
no more.
Good night, night bird—far off—through the high pines—
If it were so simple as getting up again.
This life and no other …
6 thoughts on "For my Father, Six Years After (A Cento Using Lines from David Baker’s Whale Fall)"
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wise rendering of Baker’s opus
1st line sets it a-sail
last line brings it home again
Thanks for reading, Jim. I should have made my Cento description clearer. The lines are taken from poems in the entire book, not just his poem, “Whale Fall.”
This is beautiful, Ellen. I love the call of “are you there” and all the lines that brings me sounds and textures.
Thanks, Nancy
Such a gorgeous elegy. I particularly like the shape of it–the indents, and the staggered line length. Powerful cento.
Thanks, Karen! High praise from the Cento Queen!