This Was Before by Ginny Lowe Connors

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This Was Before
by
Ginny Lowe Connors

she had fallen off the cliff

of adolescence. On the back porch

she sat humming to the crusts

of her sandwich, her mother

in the kitchen behind her, a radio

jabbering, spoons clattering

gently in the sink. The sun caught

a caterpillar bumping along

a loose step. How would it ever

learn to fly? An afternoon so ordinary

she couldn’t imagine its extinction.

This was back when clouds

were for dreaming and tweets

were for birds. Before everything

sped up. This was before

she’d even begun to feel

her own blood curl

like a whisper of smoke, flicker

turn unsteadily to flame.

This was before

embarrassment tried to kill her.

Ginny Lowe Connors is an English teacher in West Hartford, CT, where she has been appointed as that city's Poet Laureate. Author of two published poetry collections and editor of several poetry anthologies, Ginny also runs a small poetry press, Grayson Books. She’s won numerous awards, including the Sunken Garden Poetry Prize, the Atlanta Review International Poetry Competition, and numerous prizes sponsored by the National Federation of State Poetry Societies–including their coveted Founders Award. Learn more about Ginny at www.ginnyloweconnors.com.

plgoodman:
You've nailed it, Ginny. I love the transcendent quality of this poem
Posted 03/27/2014 07:03 PM

TheSilverOne:
That painful and wonderful transition is so beautifully expressed here.
Posted 03/27/2014 11:14 AM

erinsnana:
Wonderful!
Posted 03/27/2014 09:46 AM

mimi:
such a perfect description of two lost places--adolescence and the way our world used to be...beautiful!
Posted 03/27/2014 09:07 AM

wyantjl42:
Very moving piece, especially the line: "An afternoon so ordinary she couldn't imagine its extinction." Also liked imagery of deferred development of the caterpillar vis a vis the narrator's sense of the end of childhood tranquillity and ordeals of adolescence.
Posted 03/27/2014 08:40 AM

njc:
Beautiful. Love the title, love every line.
Posted 03/27/2014 08:33 AM

Richard Greene:
A fine poem, show not tell, powerful observation and metaphor, the universal evoked by the specific.
Posted 03/27/2014 08:29 AM

Barry:
Great little poem. Love the last line!!
Posted 03/27/2014 08:17 AM

Sherry:
Very good!
Posted 03/27/2014 08:13 AM

dmahoney:
Cheers to those afternoons so ordinary! As a retired English teacher, I could see students using this poem as a model to write their own poems about "this was before." Great last line!
Posted 03/27/2014 07:35 AM

Gilbert Allen:
My favorite phrase is "humming to the crusts / of her sandwich." Evocative indeed!
Posted 03/27/2014 07:19 AM

phebe.davidson@gmail.com:
I love the way this one draws its closing--how immediate, how forceful and full of perspective, and even how trivial all at once!
Posted 03/27/2014 05:36 AM

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