Author | Poet | Photographer
In the letter you sent
You tried to explain to me–
I couldn’t understand. You
Tried to condense
Fifteen years of unspoken
Words into
A song you said
I needed to know
Why you floated–
Why you made your
Choices and broken
Promises
Yesterday, I began sorting boxes my parents delivered over a year ago after Jacob and I moved into the house. One of these boxes was a mix of school papers, including some of my earliest poetry. These are the poems I’d forgotten about.
Based on the folder, they were written sometime between 2000 and 2005, so I was between ages 10 and 16. As I go through these some will be hilarious and worth keeping for that reason alone. Some are insights into the mind of an adolescent alive during that time period and the observations they chose to write down.
I’m started with a series of four untitled poems, four lines each. Now, enjoy some childish, painful forced rhyme.
Sometimes I’m jealous
Of those who win
All the things
That might have been
We tend to love
What time we waste
The past is delicious;
Time? An acquired taste.
Oh Glory Be! In times we say
As all hope drifts far away
It is the clouded sea she took
And my heart – a little brook
Sometimes the world just passes by
A shock so sudden we can’t cry
With each candle on birthday cake
Comes regret with decisions we make
Thank you for taking the time to read these today! Without you these posts don’t carry the same meaning. Have you ever found any of your old writing? What did you think of it? What do you think of these? I’d love to hear in the comments!
If you’d like to see more of my forgotten poetry, please like, comment, and/or share this post. It helps me know what content my readers are most interested in seeing, so I can better know what to share here.
Today’s poem is dedicated to a special demographic. For those unaware, Accomack County is one of the hardest hit by the coronavirus pandemic in Virginia. Tangier Island, one of our treasured communities, is safe, but if the pandemic reaches its shores the results could be devastating. I’ve been a Bull Islander and a Shoreman, and by that, I am blessed.
We go out in boats
Catch the sun’s morning rays
In nets and crab pots
Tossed over the sides
Into brackish green depths
These channels – our roadways
Through marshes and creeks
The bay feeds our veins
Where we have sewn seeds
Young oysters – new reefs
Repairing pollution
To save our way of life
Our houses on stilts
(As sea levels rise)
Overlook a world over water
And ospreys laugh songs
We bring in our bushels
To markets by shores
Sell seafood by dozens
No quotas or weights
And pray to a God
For mercy and hope
In the next hurricane
There never been Noahs
In the many Great Floods
But still, we are
People of faith
Thank you so much for reading my poem today! If you found its words meaningful, please consider liking, commenting, and/or sharing it with others. Truly, I am grateful for the time you spent reading my work.
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I wish you could know him
He’s everything you wanted
He dances with no music
And laughs at my jokes
And I would bring him home
Beneath the big Live Oak
There’s something so sick
About how I finally fit in
How you think you won
How you saved me from sin
“That’s not how this works”
I wish I could scream
But that’s not Southern charm
That’s not peaches and cream
So instead I battle with myself to be pristine
Debating what it means to be seen
Is it possible the land of my birth could change?
Can I assume anything stayed the same?
Imagining sandbars shimmering; seagull echoes
Restless feet in water with curious skates nibbling toes
I hunger for home and slowly die of starvation
But the wound is deeper than my severe deprivation
Yet, how grateful I am to have chosen family
Voices of the Richmond vortex’s gravity
Perhaps one day I will return
With so many stories we have yet to learn