Monday, February 15, 2016

Found Object Poem Project -- Dregs


Photo by Heidi Mordhorst
Heidi's image gave me the word dregs. I started several poems lamenting how much STUFF I'll leave behind when I'm gone, vs the elegance of shards of worked flint left behind by ancient people. Imagining finding remnants of early people led me to an image search for one of the intermittent streams that can be seen from I-70 on the drive through Eastern Colorado from Kansas towards Denver. I explored Bijou Creek along with the 2003 Field School in the Paleontology Certification Program at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science (day 6), and found my poem.



Dregs

It's late summer.
All that's left of Bijou Creek
is a sinuous path of green
between low eroded hills.

In the cutbank of a gully we find
fossilized fragments of turtle shell,
and a Paleocene tree trunk
buried in its upright, growing position.


©Mary Lee Hahn, 2016


3 comments:

  1. It's fascinating to see what paths the found objects take people on. Thanks for sharing your process, Mary Lee.

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  2. I am always fascinated by your process and the way you write, Mary Lee.

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  3. What a cool process; this following of a specific image into an idea, which brought you back to a specific image. This gives me something to try in my own writing journal. Thank you.

    Love the "upright, growing position" of the tree. Dregs of a moment cast in the concrete.

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