Journey into the past...

I've been digging through old papers: college era and early 20's stuff. Most of it's banal, like gradesheets from students I taught 14 years ago (!), class notebooks from college courses, stray receipts from the same time (wtf?). However, I used to write poetry and songs quite often, and I'm coming across plenty of those and these are both amusing and painful to read.

Take, for instance, this little bit of song lyric, written in 1986 (yes, I dated all my stuff even in high school):

"It takes me so long
to put these words into song
now since they're written fine
I'm not sure if they're mine"

Groan.

And then there's this little poem, written in the bitter dark aftermath of the collapse of a very long relationship. It's not horrible, but the resolution is too obvious and needs work. It dates from 1993:

Late Frost

Now the earth is covered in late spring frost
and the thaw will come too late to save the crops
we planted early, our hopes
set on large harvest. It was not fallow ground
in which we planted, but who can tell how nature's seasons
will push and shove the months, ignoring equinox
and shrugging off the calendar's printed dates?

We risked security to early yield, but now the plow
must cut the ground again to open up the fields
for new seed. The company is hiring in town, you say,
and there're places where eight hours make a day
and clay doesn't cling to boots and pants.
Sell the land for someone else to plant tidy townhouse rows
and plan quaint cul-de-sacs upon this once bumpy earth.

But I stand alone now in this field and feel
the fertile soil beneath my feet and I'll be damned
if another set of hands won't come to help
the lush green crops to spring again.

A little better. I think the last stanza could have used about eight more lines and a more subtle introduction to some new hands...