Laura P. Salas is hosting the round-up: http://laurasalas.com/blog/
Creating an acrostic for a poetry assignment this week got me remembering another acrostic—one I composed this past April.
A first grader—daughter of a former student of my husband’s—was dying of a rare form of cancer. Besides the connection I felt through my husband, I felt my own connection with the child. As a kindergartner, she had won her school’s poetry contest. (Not that I ever won that distinction, but loving poetry from my youngest years—that would be something we had in common.)
Given the child’s tenacious response to her cancerous plight, the watchword for her fundraising campaign was fittingly based on the words of another poet:
― William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream
In response to the heart-wrenching news of the child’s Easter Monday “death” (Her family prefers to think of her release from the pain and infirmity that held her captive—free to be forever joyously alive with God.), I set about to write an acrostic in her honor.
The resultant poem “frightened” me—in an awe-struck way–in that the name-acrostic seemed larger than life—the life of hers that just had passed peacefully into eternity.
How poignantly the poem proclaimed what had been the child’s defining response in the face of adversity…As if her given name, the name she answered to for three months’ short of seven years, held the secret of who she truly was (in contradiction to the apparent namesake-connection with a delicate flower), as well as what was heart-breakingly, and equally inspiringly, to become her legacy in the ongoing fight against childhood cancer…
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If you feel inspired to learn more about this purple-loving little Shakespearean protégé, here are some links:
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cbhanek 