Colleen Dione Taylor-Rowe
This book is designed to give the reader more of an understanding of what has prompted the writer to create these proses. This book motivates the reader to stop and think about things. Understanding what motivated the writer to put the words together to create these poems makes the experience long lasting and appreciates your past better. We each grew up with challenges. How we handled them, how we remember them, how they changed our behavior and thinking process is the differences that can push a person into writing to heal. Each time you read what she wrote you are moved to a deeper understanding of her life and her journey through it all.
Before Colleen could write she fell in love with poetry through the songs she sang at church. The words moved her mentally and gave her direction in her thoughts. Having journeyed through some tough times and personal challenges she began to write to bring some direction and clarity to her everyday life.
Today she continues to capture moments in time. Her thoughts surround the moment and she is filled with words she is compelled to write down. Many times the understanding of what she writes becomes clear some time later. The words seem to fit a moment of time in her life or someone around her.
Prelude
Isn’t it strange how some people can go through life, in what seems like a completely reckless fashion, and never have any harm come to them. What’s even stranger is that someone, who supposedly always tries to make “good decisions”, can end up being continuously plagued by troubles and woes. This next poem is about the latter.
Linda Gentry’s husband was one of the victims of a decision a few teenagers made, playing chicken with their cars. He was on his way home one night, and now he and those teens are part of the effect produced by all of their involvement, in what seemed like at the time, just a way to pass the next five minutes.
I tried to write this poem from Linda’s point of view. The sudden death of someone who has been a part of your life is a void that is not ever filled. Your thoughts move in waves and circles. The circle is anger, shock, sadness, emptiness, memories, and love, then back to anger again. You would think that you could stay on the memories and love part but it never fails the rest always returns. The most comforting part is that the waves and circles get bigger and weaker with time, so you feel less anger over time, the memories begin to fade and the love is kept alive with the memories and through the lives they effected.
Let’s Play Chicken
A foolish decision was made today
at the cost of three dear lives.
Many questions in my head mostly, I just ask why?
We sit in silence thinking
of the last things that were said;
This is a nightmare, I must be dreaming,
We’re still tucked safely in bed?
Trying to hold on to all we can
as the memories fade away,
Finding comfort only in knowing
they are up there guiding our way.
A foolish decision was made today
at the cost of my husband’s life.
So many things I feel like now,
the one thing I’m not is a wife.
I sit in the dark as still as I can
in hopes that the next wave will fail to land.
My eyes fill up, my heart begins to ache, no !
I don’t want to feel his loss again . If only I knew,
I would have hugged him longer;
I would have made our last night one to remember.
Did I miss a sign? Should I have known?
The cycle we spent as husband and wife
was one I’ll cherish the rest of my life.
He brought out the best in me
and my love for him lives on.
