My first poem was “The March of Dimes” at age 8
That started with “We all should help the march of dimes
So girls and boys of every kind can run and jump and play”.
When a high school student I won Honorable Mention
At a State Fair Oratory Contest.
Reading with ‘superior articulation and passion’
Elizabeth Barret Browning’s poem
“How Do I Love Thee, Let Me Count the Ways”.
Why did I become mute from 8 until 38?
My personal poems nowhere to be seen or heard
My internal fires on pilot light
Operating on a few burners
To do what was needed by my children
Be what was needed by my husband.
My voice to relate my internal self
Bottled up and stopped
Not only by my throat
But by my suffocated imagination
Sealed by numerous authorities.
Fearful of what I might think
Sins I might commit
I didn’t speak my truth
Until it was a squawk
A garbled cry of rebellion.
Throwing off the mask
Of the good girl in a gilded cage in suburbia
Toppling the status quo
I found my unexercised wings
Tucked up in convention.
I flew with new found zest and gusto
Soaring, sometimes falling
But finding a resilience, a passion for life
Discovering the right words, hundreds, thousands
Speaking from my heart
In moments of personal truth
My voice, landing on a line
Poetry in motion.
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