Tag Archives: poetry about advice to the young

When First Love Expires (Not a Reblog)

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When First Love Expires

Go tell the young ladies. Go tell the young men.
Those shattered by lost love will find love again.
We recover from passion. Rarely does it kill,
and there’s plenty more of it over the hill.

That queen of your pulse, that king of your heart,
may not be your ending. It may be your start.
Don’t retire with your failure, but once more begin.
Take the leap and try love all over again.

That sweet grass dried up, we harvest as hay.
First love is a beacon that just lights the way
for your next lover—an adequate light
to create a harvest from yesterday’s blight.

Love is a virus that’s hopelessly catching—
a miraculous egg that just goes on hatching.
So do not despair if your first love expires.
Make further use of the lust it inspires.

 

The prompts for today are beacon, adequate, recover, leap and king.

 At Fourteen

There is a whole world out there and you’ll see it soon enough.
It is the world inside of you you’ll find especially rough.
Try to write about it, and try to tell the truth
about the things that happen that you find uncouth.

Write about what hurts you, and hurts that you have done–
all those shadows in you brought into the sun.
Ask those around you why they act in ways that might seem cruel
and try to live your own life by the golden rule.

Take chances and do not be cowed when you achieve less
than what you might have hoped for, and when you’re wrong, confess.
Don’t just do what your friends do. Don’t act before you think.
However strange the ones around you, try to find a link.

The world has enough meanness. Try not to add to it.
Try harder in environments where you seem not to fit.
People who are petty will cut you like a knife,
but the chances that you take will be what will make your life.

Other people’s rules pinch like a too-small shoe,
so don’t let other people dictate what you do.
Do not fear to step aside and go out on your own.
The fields that yield the sweetest crop are those that you have sown.

Post this advice up on your wall and read it now and then.
Use it as a means to reassess where you have been.
Then when you are older, and your life grows thin,
do what I am doing now. Consider it again.

 

In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “From You to You.” Write a letter to your 14-year-old self. Tomorrow, write a letter to yourself in 20 years.