Wednesday, March 21, 2018

A Golden Shovel Poem

The structure of a Golden Shovel poem is to take a short poem and use the words from one line as the ending of each new line in an original poem.  I used the first line from one of favorite poems by Emily Dickinson as my guide to write my own.

Emily Dickinson's poem:


After great pain a formal feeling comes--
The nerves sit ceremonious like tombs;
The stiff Heart questions--was it He that bore?
And yesterday--or centuries before?

The feet, mechanical, go round
A wooden way
Of ground, or air, or ought,
Regardless grown,
A quartz contentment, like a stone.

This is the hour of lead
Remembered if outlived,
As freezing persons recollect the snow--
First chill, then stupor, then the letting go.


My Golden Shovel poem:


Now is the time, not after,
not before, this moment is great.
Embrace the pain.
It is there – a
time for formal
reckoning. Release the feeling,
then peace comes.