|
About This Author
My name is Joy, and I love to write.
Why poetry, here? Because poetry uplifts its writer, and if she is lucky enough, her readers, too. Around us, so many objects abound to write about. Once a poet starts with a smallest, most trivial object, he shall discover that his pen will spill out what is most delicate or most majestic hidden inside him. Since the classics sometimes dealt with lofty subjects with a lofty language, a person with poetry in his soul may incline to emulate that. That is understandable. Poetry does that to a person: it enlarges the soul and gives it wings. Yet, to really soar, a poet needs to take off from the ground.
 
|
Dear Mr. Lincoln: 1860 (In 1860, a plot to assassinate Lincoln on his way to his inauguration failed, because the president sneaked into Washington disguised as a frail woman.)
Despite spirals of time,
you make me grin and want to dance,
because you spun out of yourself,
clever, upright,
a lank, crystalline stalk,
to weave freedom from a paradox
with the splendor of a gladiolus.
During your glorious flight,
you dared to be a woman
with a vision supreme;
cuddling your yarn and literacy, you
straightened your skirt
and caused my defiant muse
to salute your propriety
and smirk at my past--at
a rebel's initiative of disguise--
when I sneaked out
to a teen-age party
dressed as my cousin Sam.
I find similarities between us:
a voracious producer
staging a new attitude as if a boy
or a frail woman, her hair in a bun,
fingering her shawl.
Your daring daintiness
in a starched gown reaches
to comfort me, still today,
and I know,
in your manly arm lies
my womanhood.
========================================
Prompt: Select a historic event as the starting point for a poem. Do not write about the event. Instead focus on a person, perhaps yourself, who reacts to the event. Perhaps there is an event that triggers a personal history because of when it occurred. The history lesson here is personal.
|
© Copyright 2006 Joy (joycag at Writing.Com).
All rights reserved.
InkSpot.Com, its affiliates and syndicates have been granted non-exclusive rights to display this work.
|
