Mother May Know Best. Doesn't Mean She Doesn't Like Opinions.

My mother doesn't always understand the importance of writing in my life, doesn't quite get how seriously I take it. At least, it can feel that way.

But when Campaigner Challenges 2011 went up for sell, no one was more ecstatic. (It might not have been humanly possible.) I tried to tell her it was no big deal, that anyone who participated in the challenges and said they wanted in, got in, but that didn't stop her from calling every single person she had ever come in contact with. (Seriously, I think she phoned up her whole graduating class, plus the one she was supposed to be in [she graduated a year early], plus my dad's.) And you should've seen what she did to get hard copies of that thing.

She was just as excited (well, maybe just a little less) when I got accepted into OSAI. I mean, she didn't even wait for me before she opened the acceptance email. (Though I guess the unexpected screaming of "You got in!" from across the house made up for it a bit.) So of course she came to my performance. A poetry reading.

Often she has told me about her own poetry, one poem in particular. Those stories never failed to end with "I wish I could find..." After my reading, she decided to go looking one more time. You totally know what I'm going to say, right? Right? Well yeah, she found them. Way to state the obvious. ;)

Now we finally get to the point of this post. (See, this is why I try so hard not to info dump.) She wants someone to look at them. But she doesn't really want anyone she knows to look at them. That's where all you lovely people come in. -bats eyelashes- I know from experience that you all have mad critiquing skills and I'm very, very politely asking you to use them on the two poems I'm about to show you, one of which is that one particular poem. Enjoy.

(And yes, I'm totally exploiting my blog audience for my mom. Aren't I just the sweetest?)

Waiting for the Sun
by Angela Busse
(11-5-95)

A seed it once was planted
Deep within the ground.
It grew from fertile soil,
But was withered up and brown.

For the sun it never reached there
Within the shadows deep.
Happiness avoided it,
The flower, once a seed.

The flower it grew ugly,
But stronger day by day.
Or maybe it was weaker,
The strength was all its play.

Deep down the flower wanted
A true friend all its own
But found none in the forest
Where only weeds had grown.

When the shadows reached their darkest
A sunbeam it was sent
To help the little flower
All weather beat and bent.

The flower it mistrusted
The sunbeam in its room
And although it often told him
He was not to be removed.

Bit by bit the sunbeam,
He brought it back to life
He made the flower pretty,
He made its colors bright.

Now of course the little sunbeam
Was devoted to this cause,
But he was called away again,
The darkness bared its claws.

The flower didn’t know it,
But the sunbeam made it strong.
The darkness it was held at bay
Through a battle hard and long.

The flower it still held the hope
The sunbeam would return
For in the flower’s hardened heart
A love began to burn.

The flower waited longer
Than a normal flower could,
For hope it keeps our hearts alive
Much longer than it should.

The day the sunbeam did return
Brought the flower back alive.
For without a little sunbeam
A flower can’t survive.

Of Better Things Remembered
by Angela Busse
(2-25-95)

I search the darkest corners
And they seep into my mind.
They twist and then they turn on me
And it's him there that I find.

The darkness as it lifts away
Will leave us in the past.
Back to the haunting memories
When I thought it all would last.

We used to talk and speak of things.
The things we'd seen and felt.
He told me of his thinking place,
The place where family knelt.

He taught me how to look at life
I find that good and bad.
For all the doors I know it opened
I walk through what we had.

But on the grander scheme of things,
I ask a question..., "me or him?".
I think of all the memories made
Knowing I will cherish them.

As the darkness it returns
And then it fades again
I know that I will let him go
Just not exactly when.