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.

Morning Walk #3

I’m not there

Where

I can meet the sky.

I’m not there

Where thinking

Is an option.

I’m not there where

The ocean and I

See eye to eye.

I’m not there where my soul

Has wings.

2 Poems?

I have been walking to the beach every morning and thinking about things....

Morning walk #1

Pippi weighs 8lbs 13ozs and she barks at the ocean.

I think that she thinks

It will answer her.

Nothing has prepared her for this.

Not the joggers that come too close,

Or the other dogs that get in her way on city sidewalks.

It does not respond to her voice but repeats its own refrain.

The waves roll in and she runs out, creating her own song.  Soon they are dancing together. 

Morning Walk #2

There is time to find beach glass.

No need to bow

Down

Now.

It will be there when I find it.

For now, I look out.

Tall back, long neck,

Shoulders released.

To where

There

Is time.