Some Assembly Required: A Cento

 
Who doesn't want to heal a human body?    
   Wrenched by a seizure of hands, out of solitude 
 
         stone, do we wrap it in balm, honey 
    As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame 
         
A sound commences in my left ear
   and words are soot blackening the glass 

         And still this life parts your lids, you see
         all boundaries,
         as in love

I am your jar (if cracked, I lie?)
    in a wood where I too have wandered.


*
 
(Source texts: Bhanu Kapil; Pablo Neruda; 
Carl Phillips; Gerard Manley Hopkins; 
Jane Kenyon; Li-young Lee; Claudia 
Rankine; Rainer Maria Rilke; Linda Pastan)