Big loud girl,
you took shy me
under your confident wing,
taught me things
my parents never did.
Walking home from school
you yelled at a group
in different uniform:
'Catholic dogs
sitting on logs'
then suddenly stopped
before the shouting back
and the stone-throwing could begin.
'Oh, it’s my little cousin Bevvie'
and threw your arms around her.
Even then I saw
the irony
and your oblivion.
[Poem #44]
This began as a game some bloggers played in 2008, to write about people who'd made an impact, in the same number of words as one's age, every day for a year. I did them less often and went on longer, adding one word each birthday. I stopped in 2016 and incorporated them into my main poetry blog. In 2019 I resumed the project and gave it its own blog again, with a new name, where it may unfold at its own (slow, intermittent) pace. I've labelled these verse portraits, but they're more like quick sketches: mere glimpses, impressions....
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