A flight of collaboration
My good friend Pattie and I got together for coffee last week to talk writing, and we accidentally wound up collaborating on a little something, which I’ve pasted below. Not sure if you’d call it a poem or fragment, but it’s the result of two people talking and writing down what the other was saying. (And I’d like to give a nod to Dana and Nathan, who introduced me to the idea that poets can collaborate.)
BLUE HERON
How do you write about the blue heron
flapping its wings, rising out of water
in so few flaps and slow.
My childhood was gone faster that it takes
the bird to lift and go.
Some things are too beautiful
for a box of words, though Basho
could make it work.
Some of the best collaborations are accidental.
I feel like we’ve turned you on to drugs. I wonder if there’s a support group for recovering poetry collaborators.
I enjoy the chemical effects of collaboration.