I mentioned yesterday that I had some ideas for the last three days of NaPoWriMo, and that I’d already written a poem for today, but I wasn’t entirely happy with it. Later, I found something that I’d written in my notebook previously and forgotten about, which was starting on the same theme, but hadn’t developed very far. I compared it with the other one and took some bits from both to make something more complete, which is what I’ve shared. But I also thought I’d share the (semi) ‘complete’ poem on here so anyone who wants to can compare and contrast (and also it lets me off the hook for writing a full 500 words today).
Look back along the path that led you here,
the threads that came together in this place.
Though fire, water, earth and air you travelled,
to make your pilgrimage and find your fate.But don’t be fooled in thinking this was ‘destiny’;
there is no mighty hand that guides your way.
Your thoughts and choices led you down the path you took:
to try, to give up, carry on or stay.If you look for the path to lead you forward,
Linda Rushby 26 April 2021
you’ll find no clarity from this point on,
each day is empty, open, there’s no map to read,
so take your chances as you’ve always done.
You’ll notice that the style is quite different from the other poems in the sequence, with longer, more regular (iambic pentameter) lines; regular four line stanzas and a partial rhyming scheme of ‘a-b-c-b’. Now, I don’t want to imply any disrespect to rhyming poetry, I enjoy reading it and sometimes I wish I could write it, but whenever it starts to creep in, it bothers me, because I feel obliged to try and continue with it, and then I find myself choosing words just because they fit into a rhyme scheme, and then having to twist the lines to get them to work, and I’m almost never happy with the results.
I’ve been picked up on this in the past, and it always makes me defensive, feeling that I have to justify why I write the way I do, when in truth I don’t really know how it happens at all – I just write whatever comes into my head, then I tweak it a bit till I’m satisfied it’s as good as I can make it. I’ve been asked why I’ve written something as a poem rather than ‘something else’, but I’m never sure what ‘else’ my poems could be – they don’t usually tell stories and they’re too short and specific for essays, they just are what they are.
In the end, all I can say is – I write them because that’s what comes into my head. I must have written hundreds down the years that have never been read by anyone else (and failed to write hundreds more) but that doesn’t matter. I don’t write to be read, necessarily, I just write to write.