A little poetry

I’m not much of a poet. In fact, I don’t GET most poetry. My boyfriend doesn’t understand how I can’t like or even get most poems but he doesn’t like jazz so I guess that balances us to some degree.

Several years ago, we were either at a dress rehearsal or performance of our school’s production of South Pacific and the phrase “open the Blue Shades” wouldn’t leave my brain. After pondering it a bit, I realized that Blue Shades is a title of a wind band piece composed by Frank Ticheli. The next day, I went online and looked up his other titles and realized a nice poem could come by combining the titles of the works he’d written up to that point. It doesn’t contain all his titles up to that point but most of them and I’m not sure that I actually ever finished it. I hope you enjoy my little poem. There’s no title to the poem itself since it contains so many in it. 😉

I have Gaian Visions
of the Proud Vesuvius
as it takes is Wild Nights
lit by Nitro.

Don’t live locked in your Fortress
like your Portrait of a Clown.
Open the Blue Shades
and let the Sundance.

When you are off
in your Sanctuary,
send me a Simple Gift.
Even if it’s just a Postcard.

From the Shenandoah
to the Pacific,
I sing a Fanfare,
my Second Symphony
as the Amazing Grace
of The American Elegy.

So, that’s it – my first “published” poem. Yes, some of it is a little forced but again, I’m not a student of poetry by any means. I hope you enjoyed it!