Poetry

I went through a drawer in my home office tonight labeled "POETRY". Poetry was once important to me. I wrote all the time in high school and college on whatever scraps of paper I could find.

I gave poems as gifts, I wrote them in calligraphy and framed them, I even won an award in college for one of them. Yes, I was that annoying girl lost in her own head trying to describe a sunset. *gag*

I was in the mood to post a poem tonight. Maybe one about a lost friendship or about being misunderstood or how mean people can be when you're down. Something along those lines. So I began reading.

I remembered how I had toiled over these poems, writing and rewriting each one until it felt right. And after the fourth or fifth poem tonight, I was quite surprised. They're awful! I mean, really bad! How I ever won an award for poetry is beyond me. The other submissions must have stunk up the entire English Department.

So now obviously you want to read one. I couldn't find one about a friend turning her back on you or about being ostracized. People have always liked me, I suppose.

But I'll share one on a different subject that doesn't suck too bad. I wrote this sometime before my husband and I got married:

Lullaby

As a new woman
I sang my independence acappella.
Four walls made the acoustics good
for one voice to bounce and play upon.
I fled to it,
accompanying my own ballet,
singing myself to sleep.

Now, my dreams are filled
with choirs
whose melodies spill throughout my rooms,
whose faces all are yours.
Now, I wake-
to painful silence.

You could fill the quiet,
testing the harmony
as you join this lonely singer of life.
We could listen,
writing our song as we slip into sleep
like notes tangled together in a chord.

by Caryl 1983