There are stories we tell ourselves
from the darker incandescence of our being                          
the tongue is a mortal flower
every word is a fluctuating flame
the seeds of fire are ours to mother
the leaves, the branches, the minutes, our listening
and every living thing is crying with its mouth wide open
the uncountable
inside everything that turns  

We circle ourselves
I keep losing my place and starting over
this strewing and gathering
by sunlight, by moonlight, and by no light
to dislodge many buried keys
in each day’s margins. There
are a thousand illuminations

We see by the light of who we are
and the river reminds
for our most unguarded moment
how to hold the immeasurably heavy
how much we’ve already lost
the spool diminishing
fans every lit cell of us

A word has many lives
the visible and the invisible
the mind’s pleats, time’s hem
this feathered interval
of change and desire
wide open in the center
so many questions
all one blue. O, how much
each thing flourishes by singing
alone in a double shadow  

~ Cento of lines taken from Li-Young Lee’s poetry collection The Undressing, 13, 14, 16, 17, 23-25, 30, 32, 32, 34, 47, 50, 52, 56, 58-60, 65- 67, 70, 72, 73, 81, 84, 86, 89, 90- 92