Paradise (POW)

Paradise is small–
our own small version
of everything.

Everything given–
the cool sea,
the shaded sky,
the windy fields,
the high fig,
everything–
had been
had been
had been.

A long, clovered pause within,
and the sweet heat of should
sweeps.

“We held more than this...”

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For this week's POW prompt, Rallentanda asked us to use the following passage from George Johnston's novel "Clean Straw for Nothing":

...we had been given our own small version of Paradise...everything had been held in a long pause within the sea and the sand and the winds and the high sky,held in the sweet heat of clovered coastal fields, the lantana, the cool-shaded fig trees,the sorghum sweeps. Should we ask for more than this?

I decided to do what amounts to part erasure, part a jumble of the words, rearranging them to find a different intent. I made a couple tiny changes, and some repetitions, but otherwise everything comes from the source text.