Looking Back

Today, a friend and I were talking about the poems we have published. I have only one to claim, and re-reading it now is an exercise in restraint--I want to edit it to pieces. To rewrite it. It could be so much better! But it's out there, immortalized in print. So I suppose if I want something different, I'll have to write from scratch. Here is that poem:

Our Lady of Sorrows

The hallowed lights have gone away;

our solemn doors are fastened tight—

There is no one left to pause and pray.

Through halls that fade and weather gray,

pervading winds have unfettered flight;

the hallowed lights have gone away.

Nor is there one to wait and stay,

to offer up a closing somber rite.

There is no one left to pause and pray.

Dust creeps up to keep our bloom at bay—

gilded chapels hide behind cobwebs woven white;

the hallowed lights have gone away.

Our waiting for the saving break of day

is useless with this unswept blight.

There is no one left to pause and pray.

Hymns are sleeping silent with decay,

icons slumber, veiled by night.

The hallowed lights have gone away;

there is no one left to pause and pray.

I decided to keep looking through my poetry from college, and I did find a couple poems I am fond of. I still love this sonnet:

Evensong

I am in need of rest to still my soul.

Over my troubled, broken lips,

a peace must wash with symphonies of whole
melodic healing, deep to shake my fingertips.

For restoration, aches my head bent low,

for some refrain to mollify the dead—

a song to cause my heart to overflow,
a hymn to pour like oil over my head.

There is a magic in the rhapsody:

a spell of comfort, slumbered breath, a dawn,
for hearts to dip into a harmony—

the calmness of a sea withdrawn—

to drift eternal in the velvet deep,

to nest in hands of cadence and of sleep.

I also realized I did not write a single thing in 2018. 2018 was honestly a very dark year for me for the most part. 2019 holds so much more promise and hope. I'm going to challenge myself to write this year. At least in April, for National Poetry Month. I'm going to try to write a poem a day for that month. I've done it before, so I know it's possible. I might be a bit rusty, and some days might just be haiku, but that's alright.