The Goose Girl

She is returning home,
face proud with blood,
eyes no longer the same.

The geese are my brothers, she says.
This was once my own goose foot,
too tender to walk on sharp stone.

After digging in the soil,
it is light as it rests in her palm.
She will carry it with her, always.

The moon, dark with sorrow,
has the answers to all her questions.
There are too many now to tell.

* * *

Today's poem uses another technique that I learned from Barbara Marsh in Writing Poetry: Experiments in Choice and Chance. The technique: choose a poem that you do not know well, preferable one that you have never read before. After each line of the poem, write your own line in response. Then lift out your own lines and use them as the basis for a new poem.

For my starting point, I chose Loneliness by Meg Kearney. I tried not to read the poem before working with it. (Although I enjoyed it tremendously afterwards!) The resulting piece evokes the world of Grimm fairytales. Working from someone else's poem rather than my own ideas allowed the poem to retain an atmosphere of mystery, even to myself.