Zelda's Inferno exercise: write a poem that includes eight or more words from the following list, which workshop participants brainstormed around the theme "home":
door warmth foundational Baltimore secure share hideaway den hearth siding vista center movable happy grow
sharing the center
with circles, those perfect shapes
this can only happen when
one encloses, surrounds, the other
but the oblong ellipse --
the shape of the earth's walk around Helios's den
and of the comet's plunge from its dark hideway down into the warmth of the solar hearth
the ellipse can share its focus with many
without surrounding
it is eccentricity that saves us
from surrounding or being surrounded
that takes us away and then back again
falling in and then shooting back out
in balance between our own momentum
and the foundational pull that roots us
we travel a loop with a one fixed focus
but the other focus is movable
orbital precession
so that we trace the shape of a blossom
a many-petaled flower
an emblem of our life
joy and beauty and --
let us not forget the flower's evolutionary purpose --
sexuality
sharing one focus
without surrounding
pulled the same way
but each expression individual
eccentric
unique