the deepening ground

Between wrapping up the third marking period at school, putting all my creative energies into finishing my series of fifteen constellation songs (TWO TO GO!), and the busyness of Spring with speech and debate tournaments, announcing baseball games, and the seasonal “to do” list, I figured I would benefit from a stroll down memory lane with a series of Throwback Thursday poems. I immediately went to the spiral-bound copy of poems and songs I had given to my grandmother for Christmas in 1996, which I have kept in my closet ever since she passed. Most of the collection wouldn’t be something I’d post here, but the latter poems capture the growth that took place in both my subject matter and voice after I declared myself an English major in college.

Here then is my first Throwback Thursday poem from December of 1995. It is a pantoum, which is defined by the Academy of American Poets as, “a poem of any length, composed of four-line stanzas in which the second and fourth lines of each stanza serve as the first and third lines of the next stanza. The last line of a pantoum is often the same as the first.”

Blossomed and Faded

By Vincent H. Anastasi 1995

I was watching a flower die,
days and weeks passing away
as the bright blossom of rosy pink
faded into yellowish-brown.

Days and weeks passing away,
the heavy head begins to bow
faded into yellowish-brown
like antique silk.

The heavy head begins to bow,
fallen petals littering the grass
like antique silk
of an old wedding gown.

Fallen petals littering the grass
and the white lace
of an old wedding grown
faded yellowish-brown.

And the white lace
stored away,
faded yellowish-brown,
is the memory kept for rainy days.

Stored away
where we keep the flower that
is the memory kept for rainy days,
rainy days and cold good-byes.

Where we keep the flower that
blossomed and faded,
rainy days and cold good-byes,
is in the heavy head, beginning to bow.

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Originally included in a self-published booklet titled Fingerprints on the Window, 1996.