Poetry Month #2: Ignorance

I decided to drop the prompt for NaPoWriMo today. It's actually a really neat prompt, so maybe I'll use it sometime later in the month. Today I was reflecting on my senior year, and how disrupted it's been due to the COVID-19 crisis.

I don't mean at all to wallow in self pity, because my life is incredible, and me and my family are healthy and well. But there is still a sense of mourning for some of the things I have lost, the largest of which is Speech and Debate Nationals.

This poem was born of that the strange experience of not knowing that last year's would be my last.

Ignorance Day #2

How could I know it was the end

I thought only to onward send

You all to make a running leap

While I stayed watching from my keep

My crowning chance to come again

Unthinking that my heart could rend

That life’s straight path might jagged bend

That I would shattered pieces sweep

And mourn what might have been

When next I know not it’s the end

(After a laugh with you, my friends)

Let it be dying in my sleep

Unable to look back and weep,

And ache for all I’d planned to mend

And mourn what might have been