Life, Poetry, and the Order of Words

I wrote a poem in January for my friend, Anna.  She's an amazing artist who has been through a lot, just like me and everyone else in the world.  So, with her latest painting she gave me, I wanted to give her something in return.  I started to write a poem based on her, and soon I realized it's based on her and me and probably every woman I know.  I wanted to post it on here for a couple reasons.  First of all, because I haven't shared my poetry on my blog yet, and that's part of the reason I started blogging.  Secondly, because I made a drastic change in the revision stage of the poem. 

It's interesting how changing word order and placement can take a very depressing poem and turn it into something full of hope.  So, in a sense, I wrote two poems.  The first one, "beautiful girl, broken", was the first draft.   

We see her.

The girl,

beautiful in her own way,

unaware.

We know her.

The girl,

broken by regret, circumstance, labels,

fighting.

We are her.

The girl,

courageous and craven,

perfect and pitiable,

fierce and frightened,

beautiful, broken.

After looking it over again, though, I knew that this wasn't the poem I wanted to write for my friend. So, using the same words and just changing the order, I captured what I feel is the essence of life as a 21 year old woman who just went through treatment or a 28 year old woman single and doubting that she'll ever find a great man who loves her for her or a woman in her early 40s who just lost her father or a 64 year old divorced woman lonely and struggling with health and money problems, etc.  We've all got things we're going through, but "broken" doesn't have to be the final word.  There is hope for a future and life beyond our circumstance, and with that in mind, I made the necessary revisions and wrote the revised version.

broken girl, beautiful

We know her.

The girl,

broken by regret, circumstance, labels,

fighting.

We see her.

The girl,

beautiful in her own way,

unaware.

We are her.

The girl,

craven and courageous,

pitiable and perfect,

frightened and fierce,

broken, beautiful.

I find it interesting that by using the same words and changing an outlook, we can have a completely different feel to a poem.  I feel that way about my life.  I can chose to live with a negative slant on things, dwelling on all that is wrong (which in all honesty, I usually do), or, with a life of the same hardships and circumstances and choices, I can have a positive look and have the last word of my life be "beautiful" instead of the last word be "broken".  What's the last word on your life?  It's easy to dwell on the hurt and the fear and the things that go wrong, but these poems challenge me to take a different and more optimistic view of my circumstances and the words which make up the poem that is my life.