Wednesday, September 6, 2017

This post is part of the monthly blog hop/therapy session known as the Insecure Writers Support Group, founded by the one and only, Alex J. Cavanaugh. If you're a writer, insecure, or just supportive of writers—insecure or not—please join us. It happens the first Wednesday of each month.

I encourage everyone to visit at least a dozen new blogs and leave a comment. Your words will be appreciated. 
Today's optional IWSG day question is: Have you ever surprised yourself with your writing? 
  
I’m a poet...
And I never would have thunk it...
Except...
Many years back...
My mother always kept a shoebox in her closet...
I always wondered what she kept inside...
But never a snoop, I never opened it...
Until after she died...
When I found that old shoebox again.
After years of wondering...
I opened it...
Wow!
Inside were poems I wrote as a kid...
She saved them!
I had totally forgotten about them.
Here's one I wrote when I was ten...
I was very much influenced by Edgar Allan Poe at the time...

THE NIGHTMARE OF THE OLD WINDMILL

Through a field and over a hill,
There I found an old windmill.

Deserted of course, I went inside,
Thirty feet long and twenty feet wide.

Would make a good hideout, don't you think?
A candle for light and a basin for a sink?

Out of the mill and down the hill,
Through the field I race.
Into the house and into my room,
With such a goodly pace.

To tell my pets, to tell my dolls,
On my bedroom shelf,

To tell my friends, Maggie and Joe,
And of course to tell myself.

Through the field and up the hill,
And into the old windmill,

There I find in the window,
A head upon the sill.

It's coming closer and closer to me,
Above the head my mother I see.

Out of the mill and down the hill,
Through the field I fall.

Now I hear the breakfast call.

The morning sun fell on my bed,
And I wake up filled with dread,

Remembering the nightmare of the old windmill.

And what’s cooler than finding these old poems? 
Is that this one actually got published...
In my sister’s high school paper, no less...
Yeah, she passed it off as hers, but hey!
I got published!!!
So...
If I hadn’t found and snooped in that box my mother kept...
I might have forgotten that my first writings...
Were poetry.
What about you? 
Ever write poetry?
Ever snoop in your mom's closet?
What writing of yours surprised you?

Always,
Em-Musing