A Choice, A Destiny

My father read me poems when I was young —

long tales of Hiawatha, night by night

while I lay in bed entranced,

fighting to stay awake to hear it all.

I loved the stirring highwayman

and his brave and tragic Bess,

cringed at the goblin coaxing the nymph

to give up her green glass beads (he loved them so).

I watched, in Flanders Fields, the poppies blow

over the graves of soldiers who were young.

By the time I was seven, I knew:

I wanted to create beauty,

to spend my life on that.

And the greatest beauty I could create,

being human and not God,

was, to my ear, poetry.

Later, I read it for myself, on the page,

learned to appreciate the nuances, the craft;

discovered freer, subtler ways.

But then I was a child

in the days of no TV, only radio.

I listened to songs

to find out rhyme and rhythm,

I experimented, explored …

and never looked back.

April is Poetry Month. This year I am responding to the 'Poems in April' prompts at imaginary garden with real toads, the first of which is, What Sparked Your Poetic Heart?