by Isabel Yabes

 

“All grown-ups were once

Children…

But only a few of them

Remember

It…”

How dim

The future

Will be

Should we lose

That innocent child’s voice

That cries out to us

“Come back! Come back!”

As we grow up;

How sad

The future

Is to be

Should we stop

Smiling

And

Laughing

And

Loving

As dearly

As we do

Now.

Like a

Bird,

A mere fledgling,

Grown up

And

Soaring away,

Your youth

Must not be.

As we grow up

Do not let it

Be lost

To you;

Do not let it

Be the

Keys

To your

Childhood,

Lost

And

In the dark.

Do not

Grow up,

Dear child;

Not entirely,

Not ever

Fully.

Your

Inner child,

You must not

Lose.

Yes,

Grow,

But

Never

Forget

The child

Within.

 

Poetry Publication Reflection

1. I published an Inspired By poem.
2. The source of my inspiration was the book, The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, specifically, the italicized quote in the beginning. It inspired me because The Little Prince had such a big impact on how I viewed life after I read it as a seventh-grader last year, but the above quote by itself left me in awe and wonder. So many people don’t know about how important this is, and I used this as an opportunity to voice this.
3. The tone of my poem is somewhere in between nostalgic and protective, but I can’t exactly define which one it specifically is. When I wrote this, I was mostly thinking about how I would address someone I watch grow up, like a child or younger cousin — someone who looks up to me for advice.
4. The theme of my poem is ‘Don’t lose your inner child.’ It may seem quite obvious, but that was how I felt it needed to be conveyed.
5. Two examples of figurative language in my poem are:
   1. “Like a/Bird,”
   2. Simile
   3. The comparison of the one the poem is addressed to and a bird allows the reader to understand, as continued in the next few lines, the one addressed cannot lose their youth in the way that a fledgling so easily flies away from its nest.
   4. “Be the/Keys/To your/Childhood”
   5. Metaphor
   6. The comparison of one’s youth to keys was my way of symbolizing how easy it was to lose, akin to the way a person loses their car keys or such.
6. Two specific ways I revised my poem are:
   1. I made a significant revision when I added in the entire section of “Like a/Bird” to “In the dark”. I made this revision because the poem itself seemed to lacking more figurative language and insight on what I meant in the remainder of the poem.
   2. In comparison the revision mentioned above, this one may seem very minor, but I took out the word “car” which, as I initially planned, was supposed to come before keys, but then I remembered people don’t always lose car keys, but mostly just keys in general. Simply, I took it out to make the metaphor more general.
7. For me, this poem was somewhat easy for me to write, because, while the quote itself was really inspiring and riveting in the sense that it helped the words flow really easily, the figurative language was hard to implement, and it took me a few revisions to get them in.
8. I am actually very satisfied (while Alexander and Angelica aren’t) with the final draft of my poem. Everything turned out the way I hoped, and it was really fun to write. I thought this was a great end-of-the-year project! But, if I could do something different, maybe I’d make more of a point on how grown-ups and kids differ from the point of view Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s characters, just to make it a little different.