Life’s Misled.
I think she was too happy as a child.
Life is not all rainbows and happy smileys.
I think she was growing too wild.
Life is not to be spent staring at the clouds and stars.
Life is more than rainbows and happy smileys.
She cannot fathom she failed in marriage.
Life was spent staring at the clouds and stars.
What a devastating experience with her first miscarriage.
She cannot fathom she believed in marriage.
In a daze of her wedding and all its thrills
No maid of honor to help her with the miscarriage.
Her bubbling world came crashing down.
A perfect wedding dress and all its thrills
She never knew anything was wrong.
I think she was growing too wild
Until her bubbling world came crashing down
She would never have known anything was wrong.
Until she saw him smothering her with kisses.
All too soon her bubbling world came tumbling down.
What did she ever do that was so wrong?
Until she saw him smothering another with kisses.
The look in her eyes, was something wild.
Thinking they were just friends is what went wrong.
She was too happy as a child.
Louise Omeasoo
1 comment:
This is a great first line. I like what you've done with it, Louise—I like the wobbling view it gives me between the "I" in all the "I think"s and the "she", that makes me think it is a woman thinking back over her own happiness, analyzing with objectivity her own younger self. (But it works equally well as one woman thinking about another—or a mother thinking about a daughter.)
I wonder, though, if there might be too much plot in this poem? The marriage, the miscarriage, and then the affair... I think if you are looking at reworking this poem it would be worth experimenting with taking out the miscarriage and allowing the infidelity to be the most painful thing; or taking out the affair and focusing on the miscarriage, and that missing baby.
I agree, Keely: the rhythm of "smiles" would scan better in the line than "smileys" for me too. And yes, alterations of the repeated lines are always good in pantoums, I think. Maybe we could even say that the more the poet plays with the lines the better the form works.
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