Join the Neopoet online poetry workshop and community to improve as a writer, meet fellow poets, and showcase your work. Sign up, submit your poetry, and get started.

Mommy's Shadow (free verse)

I wrote a poem for mom the other day.
I’d share it with you, but it turned out close.
So maybe I’ll just summarize her ways
and you can learn why I still love her most.

She wasn’t blessed with many brains I fear,
but mommy was true incarnate love.
At this point in the poem I dry a tear.
I forgot to tell you mommy’s up above.

I wasn’t there when my sweet mommy died.
It haunts me in cold ways I can’t escape.
Better the poem will tell you ‘out it hide.
You’ve heard enough, let the coffin shawl drape.

Style / type: 
Free verse
Review Request (Intensity): 
I want the raw truth, feel free to knock me on my back
Review Request (Direction): 
What did you think of my title?
How was my language use?
What did you think of the rhythm or pattern or pacing?
How does this theme appeal to you?
How was the beginning/ending of the poem?
Is the internal logic consistent?
Editing stage: 

Comments

Most and close are too much near rhyme to not count as rhyme and the remaining is abab pattern. Thus I'll assume the "free" in the free verse part of the title guides me to the secondary level of this poem which deals with death setting both the departed and those remaining behind free from suffering.........stan

Well mixed Wes
There is nowhere I stumbled with the meter, but I paused at 'better the poem will tell you 'out it hide' - I'm missing the meaning of those last three words....

I enjoyed reading this.... I don't know if you meant humour with 'at this point in the poem I dry a tear', but it put a tiny sympathetic smile on my mouth - I really like the personal touch it gives

love judy
xxx

'Each for the joy of the working, and each, in his separate star,
shall draw the Thing as he sees It, for the God of Things as They are.'
(Rudyard Kipling)

The poem is actually written, but I won't share it which gave me the idea for a poem telling you about the poem I won't share.
I called it free verse because that's how it was written. No books, one sitting, no editing. Just me talking. I just happen to talk that way sometimes. I gave meter no consideration nor rhyme... it just happened.
The contraction is "without". Medieval. Like I said I just wrote.
Thank you for your kind words. I post so little these days outside of workshops I didn't think anyone would notice.

W. H. Snow

A poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds. Percy Bysshe Shelley

Learn how, teach others.
The NeoPoet Mentor Program
http://www.neopoet.com/mentor/about

author comment

You have fallen into my way of writing? No book, one sitting,no consideration for meter, no pre-editing. I don't know whether to congratulate to commiserate.........stan

When I go to write I have what is called a field desk. A box that opens up to store pens, paper and such. It also has the lid turn all the way back so you can write on it. I write with a single piece of paper and a quill pen. The dipping kind.
And...
Four books that I won't sit down until they are in their proper place. In fact I have multiple rhymers and dictionaries (only one thesaurus... the Synonym Finder is my guru).
Sometimes I just write. It usually produces poor results.

W. H. Snow

A poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds. Percy Bysshe Shelley

Learn how, teach others.
The NeoPoet Mentor Program
http://www.neopoet.com/mentor/about

author comment

My parchment is college ruled spiral notebook and my quill is Bic. I almost never consult reference books when writing. I save them for later edits. This likely explains why there is so little wheat among my chaff lol.
A true quill pen you say? surely you jest.........stan

It's weird, but I get this "feeling" of Byron or Shakespeare cranking through stuff with this "modern" invention: the pen... so much better than goose quills.
Mine is simple pine with, let's say, a number two nib. Kind of a medium.
You should have seen the wrecks I've had with the damn bottle. I've got a new one that's wider than its height... crossing fingers.

W. H. Snow

A poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds. Percy Bysshe Shelley

Learn how, teach others.
The NeoPoet Mentor Program
http://www.neopoet.com/mentor/about

author comment

suspected you might be a closet masochist lol. But I bet the quill makes for elegant looking script

I've been told I write like Ben Franklin. He was undecipherable. Only I can read what I write.

W. H. Snow

A poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds. Percy Bysshe Shelley

Learn how, teach others.
The NeoPoet Mentor Program
http://www.neopoet.com/mentor/about

author comment

help with.But first let's address coffin shawl which might should be shroud. title, title, title.........hmmm.........(see how hard I'm thinking?).............Well, since this is a poem about another poem about your mother maybe something like "Mother's Shadow"?

A touching poem especially when it comes to the second stanza
(which could stand alone).
I don't remember you've written many of these, maybe another one or two, now I think you need to write more of them.
I really like it.

❤❤❤❤❤❤

Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words
........Robert Frost☺

Please follow me on Instagram
https://instagram.com/poetry.jo?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=

The poem this is based on is almost autobiographical and full of stuff I'm not real proud of.

W. H. Snow

A poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds. Percy Bysshe Shelley

Learn how, teach others.
The NeoPoet Mentor Program
http://www.neopoet.com/mentor/about

author comment

A confused write...but what's in your head? Vocabulary could of been richer and hence, could of worked harder. Free verse needs precise lexis. Bravo for loosening the strictures, meet you mid 21st century.

You'll probably rip my latest offering to shreds, but as I've been out of the creative loop for months, I deserve a kick...go ahead...you're one of only 3 people I take notice of anyway!
Ells.

It was never intended to read like an organized poem (I can't write free verse for shit anyway). It was to be read as an explanation of the poem I can't share (it really exist by the way, but contains many a truth I'd rather not share. It was meant as a trick.
Thank you for sharing. Never hold back with me... your not powerful enough to harm me.

W. H. Snow

A poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds. Percy Bysshe Shelley

Learn how, teach others.
The NeoPoet Mentor Program
http://www.neopoet.com/mentor/about

author comment
(c) Neopoet.com. No copyright is claimed by Neopoet to original member content.