I’ve been playing around quite a bit lately with erasure and found poetry.  Today I constructed a cento (a collage poem) made from words/phrases found in The Outdoor Life of Children by Charlotte Mason (a British educator from the last century).

The Outdoor Life of Children

A child has a natural interest in living things

Some children are born naturalists

A very prophet of nature

Communing with the larger Mother

Unbounded interest and delight

Capers about in endless ecstasy.

Drop seeds of truth into the open soul of the child

Make full use of opportunities

Watching the ways of sparrows

Infuse into them

A seed of sympathy

A love of investigation.

The sense of beauty comes from early contact with nature

A boudoir full of shells and fossils

Flowers and seaweeds

The movements of the bird, cloud, lamb, child

Unspeakable awe and delight

He is in bliss

The sad child-life from which bees and birds and flowers are shut out.

Let him work with things

Not with signs

The things of Nature in their own places

Meadow and hedgerow

Woods and shore.

Cherish in each child

Their capacity of being pleased

Children are storing up memories of a happy childhood

Every hour spent in the open air is clear gain