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Time Poetry Prompt: Poem to My 12-Year Old Self

By Heather Eure 17 Comments

time poetry prompt hourglassThe definition of advice reads: “guidance or recommendations concerning prudent future action, typically given by someone regarded as knowledgeable or authoritative.” There are times when we can benefit from sound advice. We know the internet has changed the way we interact with each other, and it has also changed the way we receive advice. For most of the 20th century, newspapers were the typical advice-column medium. While traditional staples like Dear Abby and Ask Amy remain, other, newer columns have proliferated across the Internet to cater to a wide diversity of readers. Years have passed and advice-giving is just as popular as ever.

What’s the best advice you ever received? Sometimes the right words are a lot like tools to make life a little easier. If you could go back in time and speak to your 12-year old self, what might you say?

Try It

Write a poem addressed to your 12-year old self. What kind of sound advice and common sense will you impart? Will you warn of the pitfalls of life? Cheer on the mistakes yet to come? Tell the words your young self needs to hear…with poetry.

Featured Poem

Thanks to everyone who participated in last week’s poetry prompt. Here’s a poem from Monica we enjoyed:

Normal Life calibrates the clock. You awake,
prepare strong coffee, check off to-dos, come home
to a dinner of leftovers, and whether thinned hours
whooshed in a storm of stress or minutes ambled,
Normal is the standard of the speed of time. But

a glitch, a tilt
of life over a pivot,
a fault line shocked

to magnitude
seven point nine
splitting a fissure through now

and an hour before,
cancels the calibration.
Quantities of measurement shaken,

the observer, moving or not, changes
frames of reference—stretching, blurring,
curving the line from yesterday to forever.

—by Monica Sharman

Photo by Eduardo Diez Viñuela. Creative Commons via Flickr.

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How to Write a Poem 283 high How to Write a Poem uses images like the buzz, the switch, the wave—from the Billy Collins poem “Introduction to Poetry”—to guide writers into new ways of writing poems. Excellent teaching tool. Anthology and prompts included.

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  • Author
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Heather Eure
Heather Eure
Heather Eure has served as the Poetry Editor for the late Burnside Collective and Special Projects Editor for us at Tweetspeak Poetry. Her poems have appeared at Every Day Poems. Her wit has appeared just about everywhere she's ever showed up, and if you're lucky you were there to hear it.
Heather Eure
Latest posts by Heather Eure (see all)
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Filed Under: Blog, poetry prompt, poetry teaching resources, Themed Writing Projects, Time Poems, writer's group resources, writing prompts

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Comments

  1. Rick Maxson says

    March 14, 2016 at 8:25 am

    “Normal is the standard of the speed of time.”

    I love this line, Monica! To me it encompasses so much. Normal is relative to each life, if only slightly different. And yet, it is a standard. We all say, “That’s normal.”

    Wonderful poem.

    Reply
  2. Rick Maxson says

    March 14, 2016 at 8:28 am

    Advise To My Younger Self

    Life is not long.

    The trace of down that remains
    in the bulk of you will fail, and the curl
    will coarsen, the curl will drown you,
    and you will lose your footprints
    in the moist sand of nostalgia.

    This ocean is a memory that has stolen
    everything and steals it now.

    So walk.

    There is only salty water behind you;
    love may not come from what you love;
    you cannot always choose
    the doorway that opens your life.

    Reply
    • Sandra Heska King says

      March 14, 2016 at 11:03 am

      “love may not come from what you love”

      Thinking on this. Time holds all kinds of surprises, doesn’t it?

      Reply
    • Bethany R. says

      March 15, 2016 at 3:51 pm

      “So walk.

      There is only salty water behind you;
      love may not come from what you love;
      you cannot always choose
      the doorway that opens your life.”

      I appreciate this advice and the poetic way you’ve layed it out, Rick.

      Reply
  3. Sandra Heska King says

    March 14, 2016 at 11:09 am

    The glitches and pivots and shocked fault lines that split fissures through now…

    My goodness, Monica! This poem is so powerful. Is that one of Glynn’s overused words? If so, I don’t care. It’s powerful.

    Reply
    • Bethany R. says

      March 15, 2016 at 3:40 pm

      You crack me up, Sandra.

      Reply
    • Monica Sharman says

      March 15, 2016 at 5:09 pm

      Proof of a good article: when someone remembers it long, long after. Nice work, Glynn!

      Reply
  4. Monica Sharman says

    March 14, 2016 at 7:03 pm

    Ah! Thank you for the feature! And how appropriate that a poem making reference to relativity gets featured on Einstein’s birthday!

    Believe it or not, the junior high years (including age 12) were good years for me. We’ll see if a poem comes out of 7th grade. 🙂

    Reply
  5. S. Wesley Mcgranor says

    March 14, 2016 at 8:39 pm

    10-4

    Reply
  6. Andrew H says

    March 14, 2016 at 9:47 pm

    Right week? Right week. 😛

    You Must Grow Up

    You sit, and think of little much of matter
    For you are young. You have just started books,
    A bit late but you do enjoy to read of Harry Potter
    And all of his adventures. Life is such a journey,
    But less friendly. There is not one Dark Lord,
    But many. All of them will name you friend
    And not betray you ’til the end. But you must beware
    Of falseness, hidden though it is in frown and stare.
    You must grow up, alas, and face the world.

    The times to come will not be hard, not in the measure
    Of true sorrow or of pain, but they will be a trial for you
    If not to others. Soon, you will know what is death
    And see the coffin walk the long black mile,
    The people trailing through in double file.
    They’ll weep, and shower on the dark-stained soil
    But in the end they’ll talk and laugh, for they
    Have walked that road a thousand times and know
    You must grow up, alas, and face the world.

    Then comfort comes upon you like a wave
    And drags you down. You study for a time,
    And live the life you wanted. But what end
    Was there to reach for? Nothing but the endless dark,
    The grasping of the years. But you are just a child,
    And so you can not understand. That rests in front,
    That wondering on why and where. Because of this,
    I beg of you to pity those who whisper in your ear that
    You must grow up, alas, and face the world.

    Reply
  7. Dolly Lee says

    March 15, 2016 at 12:03 am

    Monica,

    This struck me: “stretching, blurring/
    curving the line from yesterday to forever.” It gave me this image of an image panning from one side into infinity….although I know we can’t see into infinity but it was the image that came to mind 🙂

    Thanks!

    Reply
  8. Glynn says

    March 15, 2016 at 10:18 am

    To a 12-year-old self

    You’re still a kid,
    at 12, collecting stamps,
    trying to play street
    football, rolling your eyes
    but secretly still enjoying
    the circus, riding bikes
    (no helmets back then;
    stay tuned); reading
    so much your parents
    are worried. But it’s OK;
    they shouldn’t.

    Two things it will take
    a lifetime to learn, and
    when I tell you I’ll get
    a funny look in return.

    But here goes:

    One, it will take you
    a long time to learn
    confidence, but you will
    learn more that those
    who always have it.

    Two, you will be blessed
    with never regretting
    a decision, a choice,
    because you will look
    back and know you
    wouldn’t have had it
    any other way.

    Reply
    • Bethany R. says

      March 15, 2016 at 3:57 pm

      “rolling your eyes
      but secretly still enjoying
      the circus”

      Love this, Glynn.

      Reply
  9. Samuel Smith says

    March 17, 2016 at 9:44 am

    To the Boy Behind Me

    Young man, those denim overalls
    grey as a weathered run of split-rail
    won’t stay. But I should also add
    that my hats always fray apart
    along the brim, the same as yours.

    My work behind and yours ahead,
    we each look forward, backward, and
    we find the other in between
    our starting and continuing points.
    Mine is the progress, yours the promise,

    your years in front of you, stretching,
    a long, grown-over row in spring,
    a plow and spade. Take them in hand
    and turn the ground for seed. Don’t wait.
    Now is the time for planting, now

    spring is the father of the fall.
    Now you must wildly cast yourself
    across the warm, black loam of life.
    Do not regret some rashness, only
    the timorous seeds left in the packet

    becoming sterile waiting for
    another season, or the hoe
    leaning neglected on a fence,
    its handle wearing down with rain
    and not with any length of use.

    Reply
    • L. L. Barkat says

      March 17, 2016 at 11:19 am

      I like this phrase both for its meaning and for the assonance between “rashness” and “packet” and the end-consonance between “rashness” and “timorous” and between “regret” “left” and “packet”:

      “Do not regret some rashness, only
      the timorous seeds left in the packet”

      For similar reasons, I like this:

      “Mine is the progress, yours the promise”

      Maybe you didn’t do these things on purpose (I know sometimes mine are happy accidents!), but there they are. And they work so nicely 🙂

      Reply
      • Samuel Smith says

        March 17, 2016 at 11:52 am

        Sort of half and half, I think. A few I rewrote for the sound, but the rest I saw and thought, “wow, that turned out well!”

        Thanks!

        Reply
  10. Samuel Smith says

    March 17, 2016 at 9:49 am

    Great work last week, Monica. I don’t know how many times I’ve reread your poem, but each time I find something new. Definitely a keeper!

    Reply

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