poetry

Surprising Memories

/ Marie / Leave a comment

Today I was cleaning out my guitar case, and I found a poem written on a loose leaf notebook paper. I have no memory of writing this, but it is in my handwriting. Rereading it, although some of the cadence is a little sticky, I really liked it. So here it is to share with you, revision free.

I’m sitting here and thinking of things
Decisions I’ve made in the past and how
Like clay they have molded me to be
The person you see just sitting here now

Where I have been and where I shall go
One is familiar, the other unknown
One shapes me and the other I shape
The future lies open, which path shall I take?

The past and the future surely meet
In the moment that I am sitting right here
The path I have trod and the path I shall take
Converge, and which way shall I veer?

The choices that I now shall make
Determine who I shall become
In a future moment when I shall
Be sitting there and thinking of things

When I’m sitting there and thinking of things
In the future made by the choice I make
I want to look at me and see
The person that I want to be

Concrete Poetry, Without the Concrete Part

/ Marie / 1 Comment

To be honest, I really struggled with trying to come up with an idea for a poem that made sense to me also as an image. I came up with nothing. So, I decided to work just with the enjambment and animal prompt ideas. My little girls love unicorns. When they were really little “The Last Unicorn” was one of their favorite movies. We took them to see the tapestries at the Cloisters Museum that were the inspiration for the story. If you haven’t seen them, I highly recommend taking the time if you are in the NYC area. The Cloisters is a small branch of the Metropolitan Museum of Art located up by Fort Tryon Park in Inwood. There is a bus that goes from the Met up to the Cloisters. Taxis sometimes have a difficult time finding it.

"The Unicorn in Captivity" courtesy of www.metmuseum.org

“The Unicorn in Captivity” courtesy of http://www.metmuseum.org

And here is my poem, inspired by my daughters and their love of the unicorns.
In ancient tales, men searched far and wide for the elusive
UNICORN
Tempted forth from family and home by the power
of her horn
Only virtuous maids, both noble and good, were sought out by this beast
Their sweet, pure souls would call them forth, as one starving to a feast
While in present day, the unicorn lives
only in stories and in myths
Seeking the virtues of the maid and beast are a noble, worthwhile
quest
Once a search that throughout the world wandered far and wide
A different journey greets us now, one that dwells inside