Pushed Into Flight

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     I say tweet tweet in the wind,
     The new bird can fly
     Mama bird gives a worm to eat
     I sit and think
     Brother bird sings a poem
     Baby bird sleeps.....

     This is the first poem I ever wrote.  I have no memory of writing it.  I declare that it is my first based off of the fact that my mother remembers writing down my words, and that my Grandpa wrote it down for himself.

     When I had just turned 13 my Grandpa gave me two sheets of paper.  Both together contained a grand total of three poems.  He and I sat together on his lazy boy (myself sitting on my arm rest perch).  He read me the poems with tenderness in his voice.  I listened. When he finished I asked him where they were from. He looked into my eyes and told me that they were my very own words. He told me that when I was 3 my mother called him and read to him these poems.  Careful to get every word he typed them up on his laptop. Now he was showing them to me.  His eyes showed pride.  Pride in me and these poems from the child I had been but don't remember being.

      A couple weeks before this moment, I had been under the impression that I had written my first poem.  It was a silly one, but the rhyme was good and the meter rather fair.  Now he told me that it was actually my 4th poem.  After 10 years of keeping it on his computer he wanted me to have a copy.

     "What for?" I asked.  "Why is this important?"

     I wish I could remember his exact words... but I cannot.  However, the condensed version I retain is, "These poems have a child's emotions portrayed in a natural setting.  Feeling is portrayed.  That is where the beauty lies. In the emotion."

     Only a little bit latter he died.  It was raw emotion. It was pain. And it reminded me of what he said. That beauty lies in the emotion.  And so, I wrote. I wrote my 5th poem. One full of love, longing, pain, and missing. The emotion pushed... and my wings unfurled.  I was pushed into a flight of expression.  A flight that sheds many poems, and helps me process the things I feel.

     Scraps and fragments
     Only pieces are good
     These 200 poems
     They hold shattered, scattered lines
     Scattered lines of beauty
     Pens have wasted ink
     I hope they except apologies
     However I'll keep wasting them
     Because I need to
     I'm a slave to emotion
     Pens, I am sorry
     But you shouldn't be
     So keep working
     Until I need you no more
     Which will be when I stop feeling