Different Lives

For NaPoWriMo: Day 28
http://1sojournal.wordpress.com/

ride, lost, tide, broke, water, still, divide, drop, remain

Different Lives

A child lost in childish things, picking up
language of music and words.
Rebellious teenager learning how to lie.
Young adult thinking marriage would be
easier than a day job in a factory.
Wife, then mother of four still thinking
there had to be an easier way.
An abuse victim learning broken.
Divorced, single parent, swimming
alone through waters of change.
Middle-aged college student wonder-lost
in finding how to become.
Part-time advocate in a Women’s Shelter,
dropping words on paper, calling it therapy, while
crossing the divide between dream and responsibility.
Managing a bookstore still shaping that dream,
while becoming a grandparent.
College instructor trying to turn tide of self-ignorance.
Published writer of poetry and prose, playing
with colors, finding meaning in differing hues.
Side-lined on disability, trying to remain
young at heart while getting so much older.

Looking back on all these different lives lived
one moment at a time, choices made both
good and bad, still dancing to music only
I can hear, awash in lines and colors I create,
can see I have become the woman
only I could be: a purple tree bent
in a celadon breeze.

Elizabeth Crawford  4/28/16

Process Notes: This was not at all what I intended when I wrote up the prompt. Tried to follow the words but they were going off in a completely different direction. Got up this morning and started listing the different roles and lives I have lived. Not what I consider very poetic, but all true and only hit the high notes. And not meant as a list of accomplishments, but rather the places and things I fumbled and stumbled my way into.

Image is not one of mine. Friend called and said she had started painting and was working on a series of trees. Asked her to paint one for me. She sent the image to me two days later.
Celadon is warm green mixed with a cool shade of blue. Purple is the color of personal power. Green symbolizes growth and growing, while blue is the hue of knowledge and wisdom. White may symbolize innocence or ignorance, and in some cultures represents death. Don’t know if she knows the symbolism, but I think the image is perfect.