June 2021
Bio Note: I'm a retired workforce development professional and union activist. Now I'm a Regional VP of the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets and their representative on the Wisconsin Poet Laureate Commission. My next collection, Communique: Poems From The Headlines, will be published in June. Order from www.watersedgepress.com
The Parenthetical You (A Life in 14 Lines)
You enter gasping for air. (You will insert here twelve lines. Begin with your earliest memory, maybe a mouse startling you at two, maybe crying on Santa’s lap. Then write it all: school, family, work, love found (and lost) and found again. Write both the sorrows and the joys, each of which will be more than some and less than others. Shine your own light, with steady purpose, on the world as you see it. Because these twelve lines are all you have. They’re yours and yours alone. The first and last lines belong to everyone). You exit gasping for air.
Originally published in Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets Museletter
©2021 Ed Werstein
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