A Poem

When I was in 8th grade, we had a guest poet visit my English class and share with us some pointers on writing great poetry. I don't remember much about the man at all, but I do remember he gave us lists of words to help inspire us in our writing. They were organized in sets of four and intended to create pictures in our minds that we could translate into our writing.

I wrote the following poem and volunteered to read it first. My class had much of the same reaction as my 5th grade class when I whistled for them. Jaws dropped to the floor and no one else wanted to volunteer to go next.

Now that I'm about 17 years older, I just have laugh at the 8th grade version of me. As I recall, there were 4 stanzas, and it was published in a book of poetry from kids in our school district. I'll look for the poem in its entirety and post it here if I can find it.

Life is like a teardrop,
blowing in the wind.
With ups and downs pushing you all around
causing cuts and breaks within.

Childhood is forever
with toys here to and fro
as we play hide-and-seek
among the marigolds.