About a year ago, I eagerly anticipated hearing back if I won anything from the poetry contest I entered -I was really just hoping to make the top 50 and have the chance to be published. I entered three poems and then waited. And waited. And waited. Nothing happened. I couldn't post what I had entered because the contest rules prohibit previously posted work, including what has been shown on a blog. Alas, I did not stun the judges with my mad writing skills. But I am grateful to my friend Tasha who pushed me to enter to begin with and then for reminding me through her blog that it is NPM. I have started teaching my poetry unit to my 9th graders, and am looking around for some inspiration to start writing myself again. Between Tasha adding poems and commentary to her blog every other day and the endearing - if not sometimes grumblingly labored - writing of my students, I am hopping that I can add to my own arsenal of poetic musings. While I may not be up to par to be published in Writers Digest magazine, I started writing before I knew about them and I hope I will always take the risk of trying and failing at things I truly love to do. Here is one of the poems that I submitted.
"Birth"
The nest clung to a rotting board
in a dark corner of the garage
among rusty tools and buckets and drop cloths.
It stuck there like a pimple on the wood,
an intricate orb.
Its density was breached by a tiny hole
out of which hundreds of spiderlings flowed,
like water from a burst dam, that began as a
trickle until the wall of darkness
could contain them no more and out they erupted
into the light -
diminutive in their size, frightening in their numbers
had I not seen them for those few moments
as infants
in the first breaths of life.
2 comments:
Beautiful. Simply, beautiful. You are so amazing and I love your writing. Thank you for posting this.
Oh my gosh - I remember that! In the garage in Milwaukee, right? The way you wrote about it brought me right back - the way you described it is, well, pure poetry! /i8 656+ a8bou8t08 0
Love the new layout!
p.s. Claire was "helping" me type, so I had to do some major damage control. But I left in a snippet for you to enjoy. You can see what she did with "about". That's pretty much what my whole comment looked like, until she hit the "insert" button and then kept hitting "home". I pretty much had to re-write the whole thing when I realized that most of my comment was gone. Anyway, love you!
Post a Comment