Two weekends ago (wow, have I been in this Write31Days challenge that long already!?) I wrote a poem for my first son. Today, I’m writing one for my second and youngest boy.
Explosive—
your arrival in middle-night
your temper loud and back-flipped
your strength of arm and heart
your love energetic and forgiving
From your meteoric birth,
Your newborn arms, even weak,
reflexed tightly–
the most beautiful jewel
I wear around my neck
Our noses touch, you love to brush
nosey-posey’s and sleep cheek-to-cheek:
“nuggles” with Mommy.
If I whisper “ouch” at a snag or bump
“You’K?” you ask,
quick of eye and heart
Oh! the dichotomy of you:
You reach out–
hit your brother,
then: “You’K?”
you reach out–
to hug and hold.
One day you’ll learn
not all can be fixed with a hug
but today… hugs still work!
Mimicker,
songster,
climber,
thrower,
dinosaur-roarer
eat-it-ALL diner,
reader,
sleeper,
mee-mee (binky) lover,
keep-up-with-your-brother
Until you,
nobody colored my walls,
drank my coffee,
spread food all over the floor,
kissed my boo-boo’s,
stole borrowed my books,
or laughed at my jokes.
God knew, I needed you.
Hazelnut eyes
reflect my own
your face, your passions
a mirror I can love to look into
and wonder
because unlike me – who you are
is still so much yet to be.
***
So, just a word about free verse (not to be confused with blank verse, which is un-rhymed iambic pentameter). Free verse has no form, no rhyme, and no meter (meter being the count and pattern of stressed vs. unstressed syllables). It’s name says it all: free. Free verse is a great way to get into poetry writing because there’s literally no restrictions.
Some advice when writing free verse is to focus on repetition, internal rhyme, and use of the five senses, otherwise you may end up sounding too similar to a prose paragraph just broken into lines. Which, if that’s what you intended, is your call! Free is free, after all!
My personal critique of this poem is that it needs more sensory detail but… it’s late on a Saturday night! So I’ll leave it for future revision!
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