sunshine swooning
eyes interred
grandmother night
day infant
dawn’s taste
copper flower
rising red rising
eastern mealody
marching westward
unexpected morning
[Process:
Just for fun, here’s some notes about the creation of this poem.
I started with the title “sun at six thirty am”. Then I didn’t like sun in the title and sunshine in the first line, and felt “sun at” could go. I feel like “sunshine swooning” is both the weakest line in the poem, and also the whole reason I wrote the poem, and therefore uncutable.
I tried to play with line breaks that change the meaning of the phrases depending on whether the lines are read together or as single entities. I changed “infant day” to “day infant” for that reason. I also tried to have each line stand on it’s own. I think an alternate way to read (and/or break) the poem would be:
sunshine
swooning eyes
interred grandmother
night day
infant dawn’s
taste copper
flower rising
red rising eastern
mealody marching
westward unexpected
morning
The last line is probably the line that “says” what the poem means or is about the clearest. I almost cut it for that reason but decided it was ok at the end of the poem.
I added the line “grandmother night” when I thought about how “day infant” sounded a bit too much like just waking up.
The last line written was “marching westward”, and as much as I think it flows well from “eastern mealody”, I deliberated for a long time on “westward” before finally deciding that I liked it.]