Monday, December 17, 2007

Onward for Read Write Poem

[This week Read Write Poem prompted us to choose a book that called to us, collect the final noun or verb from several chapters and compose a 10-20 line poem using those words. I'll tell you more about my words and their origin after the poem. Check out the poems from others this week here.]



Onward

A clock ticks ever forward,
the road brings us ever to what will be,
not to what was.
We come to see:
houses become homes with the love inside;
children grow into parents themselves;
people embrace the nerve to make horrors disappear;
beleaguering disgust may be drown by the cleansing water of tears.
A clock ticks ever forward,
the road brings us ever to what will be,
not to what was.




[My words were from the ends of the all the chapters in Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire. The words were: road, see, clock, parents, water, disgust, children, horrors, nerve, disappeared, was, home house beleaguering, drown, come. I think I tried to stay away from using the words with the weight of their meaning in the novel. If I had, I think the poem would have been very dark. It was kind of hard not to spiral downward on this - some of the words could easily send me there.]

13 comments:

gautami tripathy said...

This in itself tells us a whole story, a lifetime.

better judgement

sister AE said...

thanks, Gautami.

claireylove said...

I think you managed to conjure more than a touch of optimism here out of those dark words ~ just goes to show how important context is :) Good work!

sister AE said...

Thanks, BB.

Andy Sewina said...

Time, as referenced by the clock and the poem in general is evolving!
I like the thought that the road brings us ever to what will be.

sister AE said...

Thanks, SweetTalkingGuy. I'm glad you like it.

June said...

Very thought provoking...and so cool how you fashioned it.

Maria said...

Kind of a tough set of words to play with.

By the way, I adored Wicked.

Anonymous said...

I like all the examples of the forward movement of time: love, children, families, tears. A nice, spare poem. i liked the repeating verses at the beginning and the end, as if to say this cyle will repeat itself.

UL said...

Such a positive message as we welcome the new year - I loved the subject 'onward', very positive. Thank you.

UL

sister AE said...

Thanks, June. ReadWritePoem has a way of pushing me to try new things. This is one of them.

Hello, Maria. A friend recommended the book to me years ago and I loved it, but I couldn't watch The Wizard of Oz the same way for at least a couple of years.

Hi, mariacristina. Thanks.

Thanks, UL. Onward could be negative - I think the poem imbues the title as much as the reverse in this one.

Linda Jacobs said...

Somehow I hear a metronome ticking away in this poem. Maybe it's the consonance in some of the lines, ticking life away or maybe just the rhythm of the lines. The cadence is calming. Very nicely done!

sister AE said...

Hello, Linda. I suppose there is a kind of tick-tock advancement in the background of this. I'm pretty sure it wasn't a conscious decision.