The Beginning of it All: My First Poem

When I was a young child, I'd say 7 or so, my life was mostly lived on one street in Flint, MI. Yale street, close to Miller Road which was one of the busiest (and still is) roads in the business district. Business meaning a mall and every franchise restaurant you could imagine. A real melting pot. But to me, in my grade school adolescence, Yale street was bigger. My neighbor kids houses and a corner store and our almost innocent imaginations. Our school house up a few blocks. We would ride our bikes to the store and get soda and candy, or ice cream on the really hot summer days. Then we'd choose one of our backyards to go to and create a play and act it out, or hide and seek for one another, or run through sprinklers, or sneak past the crazy old lady's house. Some days we pushed it a little and would let the dogs loose through the neighborhood or spray the hose in someones living room to clean it real good or spin a bottle in a circle or have sleepover seances where I swear we made someone levitate.

But one day I almost got kidnapped selling cookies house to house. I never liked that private school. I mean, I wouldn't had been out there selling cookies on the street if it wasn't for them. Besides I hated wearing dresses and singing hymns. It was never for me and I knew it then as much as I know it now. After that we moved to the suburbs; Fenton and then Grand Blanc. But nothing really changed. I still had an imagination and there were still bad guys. But my imagination wasn't so innocent anymore and the bad guys just changed faces.

But before we moved out of that cape cod I found a piece of paper with a poem scribbled on it that I had forgotten about. From my room, the upper level with the tilted and peaking ceiling. A faux a-frame; an attic with another name. My mother had found it next to my bed one morning and I had no recollection of writing it, but yet there it was with my messy words scrawled all over it. It read:

There's my guardian angel

So bright and so white

There he is so pretty

Swaying in the night

Touch my eyes and close them

Touch my head

Goodnight

I titled the poem My Guardian Angel and so began my love and passion for writing and poetry. It found me. It has never betrayed me. It has been by my side. My longest friend, my confidant, my muse. Pen and paper or click clack on the keyboard or even ink in the typewriter. It doesn't matter to me HOW as long as the words get OUT. My therapy, my purge, my art. From that one poem came hundreds of others and now I will finally let them out and be born again. For me, for you. Completely raw, through and through.