"We don't read and write poetry because it's cute."

Poetry is something that many people can relate to and don’t even realize they can! Anxiety has been a major factor in my life thus far and poetry and writing has helped me overcome leaps and bounds. I kept a book of all my pieces and I when I go back I see my fears written all over the place. My two biggest fears and the themes for many of my poems were growing up and finding true love but then waking up to find it was all just a dream. Then as I got older I read more outside poetry and realized published poets also had the same thoughts and fears as I did.

Growing up is an inevitable and completely natural experience in life. Life is all about growing and maturing as a person but when I was young I was so terrified by the thought of adulthood. “Nothing Gold Can Stay” by Robert Frost is about youth and how important it is to enjoy is while it lasts. Gold symbolizes the purity and innocence of the flower but as the day goes on it’s getting older and changing. The poem goes as follows:

“Nature’s first green is gold,

Her hardest hue to hold.

Her early leaf’s a flower;

But only so an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf.

So Eden sank to grief,

So dawn goes down to day.

Nothing gold can stay.” This poem was featured in The Outsiders by S.E Hinton and has stuck with me since the 7^th grade. The tone of this poem is almost bittersweet because clearly there’s nothing that can stop people, or in this case flowers, from growing but yet we still have to enjoy the beauty of them when they’re new and fresh. Frost used a rhyme scheme, which he was very popular in his poetry! His scheme is clearly AABBCCDD and it makes the poem more enjoyable and stresses the lines better. I used to stay up at night wondering if I’d grow up and be able to make it out in the world. From that fear I wrote one of my favorite poems, “Neverland.” And it goes as follows:

“Peter Pan please take me away,

take me to Neverland

where I can stay.

A place to where I run and fly

A place I won’t grow old,

A place I could never die.

Peter I’m scared to be an adult,

they don’t have fun,

that can’t be my result.

I want to live wild and free,

go on adventures,

oh please take me?

I want to live out my dream,

imagine you and me,

we could be a team!

Wouldn’t that be oh so great?

So tonight I’ll lie in my bed,

Pray and wait.” I specifically used a rhyme scheme but skip every other line because as a child poetry is all about rhyming. I wanted this poem to show off just how important it was to me at the time to stay young. The tone of this poem is fear and a bit of sadness. I’m begging a fictional character to take m to a fictional place where I could live out my life as forever 17, which was the age I wrote the poem at. “Nothing Gold Can Stay” and “Neverland” are similar because they’re both about wanting to stay young and about enjoying youth because it does go by quickly.

A fear of losing love is also something else many poets write about. I used to have these vivid dreams and everything seemed so real, so clear but suddenly I’d wake up and have a sense of missing something or someone. I called this poem “Separate”

“I wonder if you know yet that you’ll leave me.

That you are a child playing with matches and I have a paper body.

You will meet a girl with a softer voice and prettier hair and she

will be everything you need.

She’ll be perfect.

You will fall into her bed and I’ll go back to spending Friday nights alone, hopelessly and anxiously waiting.

I have chased off every fool who has tried to sleep beside me.

You think it’s romantic to screw the girl who writes poems about you.

To screw any girl for that matter.

You think I’ll understand your sadness because I live inside my own.

Truthfully everyone’s sadness is their own and yes,

I may feel for you but I’ll never understand.

You want a miracle and I want love.

Our two wants shall not cross paths,

Our two worlds are better off separate.” I wrote this in December about one of my friends that I had fallen head over heels for. I started off the poem with, “I wonder if you know yet that you’ll leave me” because in truth we did have something but there was always a devil on his shoulder and somehow it always got the best of him. The tone of this poem was desperation to me. I just wanted him to realize what he was doing and in the end, I couldn’t find the words. We would always remain in separate worlds when it came to relationships. A poem by Billy Collins called “Divorce” on page 462 gives the same message that sometimes you love isn’t completely enough.

“Once, two spoons in bed,

now tined forks

across the granite table

and the knives they have hired.” With 18 words about utensils (which was a metaphor for much more) this reader thinks about divorce proceedings. They start off in bed as spoons, which could mean spooning the way people in love do.  Then they begin to separate and distance themselves from one another. The knives represents divorce attorneys and I think Collins picked knives because they’re the most sharp and most dangerous of the utensils. They can really hurt someone, much like the way divorce attorneys can. These two poems relate because they both end with a lack of love and sadness in them. No one wants to admit things are over when a relationship is starting to go downhill but yet, sometimes it must be said.

“Neverland,” “Nothing Gold Can Stay,” “Separate,” and “Divorce” are just some of the poems I have read or wrote that really speak to me. Poetry is for everyone as long as you understand it and interpret it how it makes the most sense to you.