Poetic Asides Poetic Bloomings 5-2 The First...

 The First Time Poetry Won Out

 

I started writing almost 40 years ago,

beginning with short stories for kids

and then novels for teens and adults.

 

I continued to write all types of prose

for the next twenty years, all the while,

shunning any temptation to write poems.

 

However, they’d pop out uninvited

and I’d stuff them into an envelope

marked poems and forgot about them.

 

At a writers retreat I was asked to read.

I didn’t know what part of a novel would do,

so I just read one of my finished poems.

 

The audience’s expressions showed me

my poem had spoken in a way prose could not.

I got out that old envelope of poetry hodge-podge.

 

I spent the next several months on a booklet.

I realized writing poems was like photography,

taking word pictures of anything and everything.

 

That’s how poetry won out.