I don't believe in...

Tuesday's quickwrite exercise over at Teacher's Write! Workshop had us looking at poetry! If you know me even the tiniest bit, you can imagine the inner carthweels of happiness I was doing. There are several amazing poems in the comments from Tuesday -- even if you aren't doing Kate Messner's workshop this month, they are definitely worth checking out.

The more I write, and possibly because my current WIP is so near to my heart, the more I realize that all the little (and not so little) hurts that I've "healed" from over the years aren't as gone as I believed. Writing through the hard parts is a little like letting the poison slowly be sucked from the marrow of these wounds. Perhaps finally taking on the challenge of writing this old-new story will mean some real healing can take place. It's an interesting revelation how intertwined the two are.

After reading Sara Lewis Holmes' unbelievably fun and witty poem, Credo, several of us tried out our own.

Here's my quickwrite response to an "I don't believe..." poem:

I don’t believe that kids should grow up,

unless I’m being honest,

and then I know they must, and they should,

and my heart beats a little faster and my

breath sort of stops in my throat

when I see these little grown ups

walk out the door and into their future.

I don’t believe in negative thoughts,

in fact, I don’t believe in them so much

that I watch them wink out of existence,

one. by. one.

But sometimes, in the darkest dark of night,

I worry those vanishing thoughts

are still alive somewhere,

and just might come back to haunt me.

I don’t believe in just one right way,

one black or white answer, a perfect solution

to save the day.

There are too many colors to paint, too many

notes to be sung, too many wondrous words

to settle on just one.

And I don’t believe in sitting still;

I’m a river, not a pond.

And life, well –

life is too twisty-turny,

filled with grown-up little kids, and

secret thoughts that wake your heart from sleeping,

and then,

there are all those words waiting to be written.

Sitting still just won’t do.