One Last Time

This month I am participating in Teachers Write!, a virtual summer writing camp for teachers held on Kate Messner's blog, http://www.katemessner.com/blog. Today's lesson was about writing poetry using rhyme schemes. We were instructed to write 12 line, using couplets or quatrains.  It's harder than it sounds!  Trying to convey meaning within the structure of rhyme and meter can be pretty challenging.  I found that it required a lot of on-the-spot revising as I had to change both my ideas about what I wanted to say as well as the words I used to convey those ideas.    

To further complicate matters, I chose to tackle a difficult subject.  Today marks one year since my father passed away.  I have been dealing with a lot of emotions over the last few days, and I knew I wanted to write something today to try to deal with some of those turbulent emotions.  The following is what resulted.

One last time you held my hand,

With your own, so soft and strong.

But like an hourglass dripping sand,

I knew we didn't have long.

One last time you sang a song,

One you had known in days long past.

For a moment, a smile erased the wrong,

A moment that couldn't last.

One last time you took a breath,

And I held onto mine.

I watched you slip away with death,

And said, "I love you" one last time.