Friday, June 25, 2010

Untitled Poem (1978, 1981)


In 1978, during a particular heart-breaking time in my life, I wrote a poem that was quite special to me. It was not difficult to write as the poem quickly wrote itself, but it was quite difficult to go through the experiences which would create the poem. In 1980/81 while taking a mixed media class, our assignment was to write or bring in a favorite poem or a story for children that cried out for "illustrations" to our next session. Given one hour, old magazines, cardboard stock, one marker, yarn, string, scissors, and tape, we were instructed to bind and illustrate our "book." I was pleased with my result and put it away to be saved. Though I thought about that poem many times over the ensuing years, I never saw the book again until I went through a box of things that my mother had saved that were mine. Behold, there was the book! The cover is  now gone and she sits in time-worn, faded agony, but she remains. The poem is below with carefully scanned original pictures: 

Rhyme,
        to music,
 is to



time in life. 







No reason, 











tho' not abstract. 


Pain...
 Hurt,
 o
 or do we know?

Tolerance??!
could be a key,
                                              maybe.
blind,
yet,
                 seen more than I,
                                                 for I too,
am truly without vision of the
rising,
or the setting. 

 Naive,
               No,  for
we both must bleed. 

2 comments:

  1. That is so fun to see and read! Thank you for sharing that.
    I have saved my old journals from high school/college and sometimes I think I should toss them as I'm not sure what my kids will think when they run across them when I'm gone!:)

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  2. Keep them, Peggy! They need to know that we are/were human! I have a college journal of my mother's that I dearly cherish. It shows you what is eternal generation through generation and how the differences were only subtle things!

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