Regrets, i've had a few

...and why the Golden Shovel is one poetry form that needs to be buried!!

Photo by Johnny Cohen on Unsplash

This week’s prompt over on

Poetry Pals

was a tough one. It didn’t seem so difficult at first, initially I was excited at the fabulous poem I could create using the 'Golden Shovel'. I wrote several lines from my favourite poems, and a few song lyrics and set out to fulfil the brief… but, man it was HARD!!!! Here are the rules for the Golden Shovel from The Writers Digest.

• Take a line (or lines) from a poem you admire.

• Use each word in the line (or lines) as an end word in your poem.

• Keep the end words in order.

• Give credit to the poet who originally wrote the line (or lines).

• The new poem does not have to be about the same subject as the poem that offers the end words.

It was really a lot harder than it sounds and so hard to make the words fit, I tried and tried so many different poems, so many different lines my perfectionist side was not happy at all the crossing out, but in the end, I settled on this and I can honestly say, I will not be trying a Golden Shovel again.

I seem to have a trait of making life difficult for myself (Maybe it’s the ADHD?!), but I chose, eventually, on the first stanza of Dylan Thomas’s ‘Do not go gentle into that good night’ because, well, why not…. and I tried, really hard to make it into something good. In the end it becomes somewhat a tale of regret from a dying person as they look back on all the things they should have done when they were alive and young enough to enjoy them.

It is hard to say, enjoy this one, but I hope you appreciate at least the work that went into it, and how hard it was…

The last regret of the dying (after Dylan Thomas)

There were so many things I want to do

but because of fear that I did not.

I wished to travel, I wanted to go

to fly around the world exploring. Instead I was too gentle

protecting myself, or so I thought, from getting into

something that

I did not recognise as good.

For too long I was haunted by the night

but now I am getting old

and have learned by this great age

protecting myself was not what I should

have done; instead I should have let my anxieties burn

to the ground; building myself a full and colourful life, and

been so vehemently enthusiastic about it that I would rave

about it to anyone that came nearby, who looked at

me smiling, laughing, living. Rather though, I chose to close

my naive mind to all of

those things hoping that maybe I would get the chance one day

But now, now I realise how wrong I was, and I am full of rage

so much intense and ill-tempered rage

that those things I was once so firmly against

are the very things I want to do with my life when the

end is nigh, and I find myself dying.

I am so frightened of

the future, but as I take one last lingering and regretful look at the

past, I slowly make my way towards the light.

From: Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light. (Dylan Thomas)

Thanks for reading

Lisa x