“Family Tree”

The (ad)venture begins. Actually it began a half-dozen years ago, when I churned out one poem after another over a two-week period. This was unusual.

I had written poems before: a parody of “The Raven” with a gym teacher nag, nag, nagging a student to get up for school; short verses for birthday cards; a group of five poems about trees (lyrical, narrative, apostrophe, and two other approaches I can’t recall). This was different.

I felt as though I was channeling the spirit of some tragically departed poet who needed to “get it all out” before resting in peace. It was a heady, harrowing time, and at the end of it I had a binder of poems that gave me great pleasure when I reread them. And reread them. And…. They were my babies, you know. I had a mother’s love for them.

While the outpouring of poetry didn’t last, the habit of putting my poems into binders did. I’ll be drawing from four binders’ worth in my posts as well as sharing newly-written poems. Nothing obscurely deep. Nothing overly serious. Lots of lighter verse and poems for the young and young at heart. Maybe a few will become a bit like family to you.

Peace to your ♥!

Family Tree

 I’ve always been a bit amazed 
     how one poem begets another.
 I work on one and think I’m done, 
     then—whoops! here comes its brother.

 Uncles, aunts, and in-laws, 
     First and second cousins,
 I started off with just one poem—
     Now I’ve written dozens!

 Perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised 
     by this genealogy:
 My poems have always felt a bit 
     like family to me.

© Stephanie Malley