Basekamp Laundry Mountain

In trying to participate in the NaBloPoMo Blogroll this month, I guess veering from their first suggestion mightn’t encourage me to keep writing this month. My first poem I remember memorizing may have been “Hickory Dickory Dock”… It has been a very long time. I have memorized so very many and written many more since then.

When I was a child I went to a parochial school so we memorized many poems, prayers & other religious  litany. During my time in elementary school, I also wrote many poems. I remember being the student chosen to write a poem for an Easter service, and having it done up in calligraphy by our class’s most talented artist.

One of the poems I wrote in elementary school was accepted into an “American Poetry Anthology” when I submitted it during late elementary or early high school. I don’t remember which one and have not ever seen a copy of the text but I remember the poem. Short and reflective of where I was in my life at the time:

This little flower, Alone on a hill

Watching & waiting for a message of God’s Will

Be like this flower, Ye children of God

And watch, It is not a bed of flowers on which your feet trod.

[Gretchen Kirby, circa 1976]