Leftover Lines For We Write Poems

This was such fun, as well as being useful. I went through all my notebooks collecting lines, and making notes of poems I wanted to work on but had forgotten. I indulged myself, picking favourite lines that I had not been able to make work anywhere but am attached to, the sorts of lines about which Stephen King would say: ‘Kill them now’. No title yet.

When the night ghosts whisper in her head,
she chases shadows that fall between cloud-raking
pines, raises her star-like face to the night, runs

until her feet reach the shore. She stops to watch
the bottleglass water wash the sand, flies paper
dreams like kites, and memorises clouds, holds

them in her eyes until they flatten into the edges
of shadows. She searches for angels in the clouds
and, in the eyes of needles and storms, slips

through tiny cracks in the teeth of night, while
death with overtaking wings beats hard against
her ears. Her soul is a black beetle too tired to fly.

Thoroughly indulgent, she said, with a big smile of satisfaction. My process amounted to taking lines I loved and copying them exactly and then finding an order that works. Thank you to We Write Poems for the prompt. If you haven’t seen the prompt, go on over; while you are there, read some of the results.