My Life in Five Stanzas

Every month in the Time to Write Community (part of Teach Write), we have a challenge or two to get our creative juices flowing to areas they might not have considered.

The challenge for February is “My Life in Five Sentences,” and since I’m usually trying to pull something together on the last day of the month, I thought I’d take an early stab at it.

Well, everything came to me as images, and as poetry instead of prose.  I wrote it and shared it with my fellow Time-to-Writers, and then debated sharing it here.  It’s pretty personal, and a little bit raw, but hey.  That’s — literally — Life.

My Life in Five Sentences

I was born a half-century ago
In a centuries-old city of
Fog, smokestacks, wharves,
And old brick.

At ten, I was dragged off to
Lower Suburbia, Different Province,
A community of cookie-cutter houses,
No ocean, few friends,
And too many bullies.

My intuition led me to safe places
In the forms of teachers,
And books, and libraries, with
My own words pouring onto the page.

My twenties and thirties meant Home,
Back to my city of bricks and mist,
Marrying my mister, rocking an empty cradle,
And countless days assuming different names
With the front of the class my stage.

My forties were a blur stirred up
By a noon crosswalk and a Ford Focus,
Relearning to walk straight, to think straight,
And a slow regenesis of Self,
With my words being the last to return,
At the age of fifty.