The Academy of American Poets defines a Found Poem as follows:

“Found poems take existing texts and refashion them, reorder them, and present them as poems. The literary equivalent of a collage, found poetry is often made from newspaper articles, street signs, graffiti, speeches, letters, or even other poems.

A pure found poem consists exclusively of outside texts: the words of the poem remain as they were found, with few additions or omissions. Decisions of form, such as where to break a line, are left to the poet.” (See poetry.org)

The following is a Found Poem that I refashioned from a passage in a prose reflection by the psychiatrist, theologian, and author Gerald May who was one of my teachers and mentors from 1986-88 in the Spiritual Guidance Program at the Shalem Institute for Spiritual Formation now located in Washington, D.C.1

When I Walk in the Woods and Fields

Now, when I walk in the woods and fields,
I like to stop, sometimes suddenly, sometimes softly.
I stand like a tree. I look around and feel my body.
I notice my breath steaming in the cool air. I sense,
inside, my emotions and heart-perceptons. My listening
is sharp and my seeing acute. I feel the temperature,
the sun or the snowflakes, and what thoughts or images
may come to the surface of my mind. If I want to know
which way to turn next, I wait, see, listen. My being
lives and wisdom comes. And then I give myself
to walking again.

1 This comes from a section of an article that first appeared in the quarterly newsletter put out by the Shalem Institute. It is titled “The Stag’s Lesson ~ Winter 1993.” In 2008, three years after Jerry’s death, a collection of his articles was published in tribute to him. It is titled: Living in Love: Articles from Shalem News 1978 – 2005 by Gerald G. May.

ARTWORK: Kathy Conzelman. Used with permission by the artist. See Simply KMC Photos.

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