Exercise: Eight Words From Li-Young Lee

[Ros]

Eight Words From Li-Young Lee: blossom, dusty, turned, nectar, shade, painted, roadside, familiar.

Take these eight words from a poem and incorporate them into a new poem (you can make small changes like making it plural, add or subtract an "ed"). I'll post the original poem in a while.

Ros

[bodkin]

In plain sight

An unfamiliar blossom has appeared
in the dusty shade beneath our steps
where any stranger standing at the roadside
might see it glimmer
white behind our badly painted wood
and we would not know
why they stared.

What does it say of us, who live
in the blossom haunted house?
To what curious practices
have we turned -- concealed behind our blossom?
And how strange is the nectar
that such a bloom may spill?

[Ros]

Street

Familiar blossoms turn
the roadside a dusty pink,

cover black asphalt
made shiny by the hours

of painted sunshine. Soon
the detritus of spring

will flow away in April
showers, leave concrete pavements

bare but for the ebb
and wash of footsteps,

nectar of the city.