Song of Poetry
Songs are but poems with music,
background to uplift the words,
harmony to let them soar
and be stuck in mind ever afterward.
I never could harmonize
or find the notes on the keyboard
but I could write, first by prompt
then by its own reward.
In middle school with reaching meter
and sloppy rhymes,
just beginning a new form
with gleeful open eyes.
Writing with friends dear
in a single notebook with a single pen
of Nevermore in the wood, and of math
for assignments again and again.
Ninth grade taught new forms
limerick, haiku, sonnet, free
crafting a line with a giggle
knowing it wasn’t just for me.
Later high school meant subjects changed
from silly bears to introspection
and collusion abated to solo sessions,
until I followed a new direction.
Poetry is for solitude
and being together in being alone,
by reading Frost in his snowy forest
and reciting of the masks we all own.
The struggle for peace gives way
as a work forms on page
and lines from others lift the heart
out of its lonesome homemade cage.
Music stumps me,
but I can capture my soul
in images made of words,
and feelings and tones by syllable.