Memory and Image Poem

I am having a lot of difficulties in my Creative Writing: Poetry class. I think that I'm going to be talking to the dean, because this is just ridiculous. I'm not going to go into it right now...but needless to say, I am a frustrated panda.

The poem we had to write this week had to include memory and images. One of the problems I'm having with the teacher is lack of feedback of ANY kind. It's difficult to write and write and write - and not know if any of it is good.

Anyway. Here is my offering for the week.

'Coming Home'

I left Montana at 20, looking for a new great adventure.

Drove off into the mountains with my boyfriend

and my life, all loaded up into a U-Haul.

I left, hoping I could run away from our past,

thinking maybe that if we left Montana, he would love me.

He never did.

Colorado was beautiful, even when my heart ached.

The mountains were stunning and soothed my soul,

but it wasn’t home and they couldn’t fix it all.

I left him at 22, hoping that a break would finally make me happy.

It didn’t.

I found some happiness in Colorado,

but my heart never fully healed.

I limped home at 24,

with a broken heart and an empty bank account.

Montana welcomed me with open arms,

bringing me back to the farm where I had spent my childhood.

I was so afraid my family would be angry,

turn me away for the things I had done and the life I’d lived.

They didn’t.

The moment I turned down that hard-pack dirt road,

I felt my eyes start to well up,

and I had to will myself not to cry.

My parents embraced me, my dad eyed my piercing,

“What the hell did you do to your face?”

It was all good-natured, as I teased him right back about

the hippy hair he’d let grow down his back.

My baby brother was thrilled that he would have me home,

someone else he could beat at board games.

He had been so young when I’d first left,

he’d gone from an obnoxious kid to an all right teenager.

It hurt that I had missed so much of his life.

I thought he wouldn’t remember his big sister,

who had been like a second mother to him for so many years.

He did.

I was gone for 4 years, only visiting home twice

and in four years, nothing changed.

The house was still a home, filled with knick-knacks

and do-dads and various junk acquired over the years.

I wandered a lot the first days of my arrival,

reacquainting myself with the hidey holes of my childhood.

It was early October, the fields were in for the year,

the equipment all put away for the season.

They never asked for the details.

Why I left, what I did, where the pain came from,

and I was happy to leave them in the dark.

All Montana cared about was that I was home,

that I was safe, and that I was happy.

And I was.