My Mum saw her sobbing backstage
after the elocution competitions —
second to my first. We were eight.
Grew up in the same suburb,
came to each other’s birthday parties,
attended High School together.
Thirty years later, surprise:
reunion onstage in another city,
reciting our own works.
Awhile inhabited the same
publications, venues, academies.
Supported each other, allies.
Went different ways again:
fiction her love, poetry mine —
rivalry, like childhood, past.
Cross-posted from my poetry blog The Passionate Crone, where it appears as: 30 Poems in 30 Days, 2010: 12 (Prompt: A poem about a rivalry)
[Poem #88]
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....