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.

Death of a Seventeen Year Old

We had her for seventeen years
Now we shed a flood of tears
Her smile her spunk we’ll miss
Remembering her life today

We talk about her qualities
We share her memories
With family, friends and enemies
This cold, winter, rainy, December day

A text went out to a friend
A stop sign went unnoticed
A crash took her life
A phone call around midnight

A church, gymnasiums fill with folks
To honor and lament her death
My daughter, sister, cousin, friend
Her memory we celebrate

Style / type: 
Free verse
Review Request (Intensity): 
I want the raw truth, feel free to knock me on my back
Editing stage: 

Comments

I wrote this because the death of a young girl many love and my kids knew from school was very sad. her mother read a poem to all the mothers at the funeral to talk to their children. Though i did not know her or her family i felt their pain and felt compelled to write this because this can happen to any of us.

*Collaborative Poetry Workshop* American Version of Japanese Poetry ~ Renga ~ Haiku, Senyru, Tanka.

Neopoet Community

author comment

I'm so sorry about your daughter. You all share in the pain of her loss - even enemies. Sounds like she was a very popular young lady full of life and love.

Thank you for sharing this heartfelt and emotional poem.

Love Mand xxxxxxxx

Though she was not my daughter I felt for her and her family as if she was. She was very popular, a A-B student, Working at the piggly wiggly here in town. she was a member of the civitan club and President of some student organization at her school. she was the kind of person that always looking to help somebody. this is what she was doing texting a young man sharing his joy in changing his life for the good when she ran the stop sign and a police officer hit her car killing her. she was a very responsible young girl her mother said at the funeral. her curfew was 12 o'clock she would be home at 11:59 1/2. a mistake took her from them.

*Collaborative Poetry Workshop* American Version of Japanese Poetry ~ Renga ~ Haiku, Senyru, Tanka.

Neopoet Community

author comment

Barbara, first of all my deepest condolences.

Secondly, I find it amazing that some folks are exploring *emotional* poetry and you have done an absolutely superb job of writing a poem that hints at the underlying torrent of emotional pain, and thus makes it so palpably real.

I don't think I could have done it.

Much love,
Anna

To receive this comment from a talented writer as yourself is humbling and much appreciated because I admire your work a lot.
though she wasn't my daughter, I'm grateful for the condolences because this can happen to any of us.

*Collaborative Poetry Workshop* American Version of Japanese Poetry ~ Renga ~ Haiku, Senyru, Tanka.

Neopoet Community

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