On taking your time

On February 4, 2024, Ecollective poetry editor Hermine Pinson sent an email to Eco editor Toni Wynn. For some good reason not stated in the message, Hermine wrote “On taking your time” in the subject line of the email. We indeed need to take time out of mind to get back on time in the mind-made world.

The message developed into an email poem which, after Juliette Harris’ response, turned into an exquisite corpse (a serial collaboration in which each writer begins a verse with the ending word of the previous verse).

From: hermine pinson
Date: Sun, Feb 4, 2024 at 10:56 PM
Subject: On taking your time
To: T, Jacqui, me, Margaret, Kendra

Toni,
An old favorite that remains true.

Nothing Gold Can Stay by Robert Frost

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf,
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day
Nothing gold can stay.

Sent from my iPhone

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From: juliette harris

Date: Mon. Feb 5, 2024 at 7:06 pm

To: Hermine, T, Jacqui, Margaret, Kendra

but gold does stay … and stay!

robert frost contrives to rhyme because nature’s “first green” do be green (pale green shoots), not gold

and gold remains, defying the transient dawn

true gold is veins of ore within the earth headlined by sunlight rings around the world

it’s steadfast metal staying until the earth implodes or is engulfed by the sun or is swallowed or ejected

and even then gold or its glittering kin (like silver’s platinum) will percolate from energies

on another planet cooked in the gasses of a system like the one revolving around our sun

Third poem here from Toni

Additional poems here from other members of the group