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.
