My poetry journey started in the early 1990's when I wrote my first poem, "Life (Tides)", based on a photo I captured, and my own experience, of a Florida sunrise over the Atlantic Ocean. I continued writing off and on during my years as an elementary teacher. I'm retired now, and fully immersed in this exciting and unique literary art form. I thank my Book Peeps friends, and my fellow poets at Cincinnati Poetry Project (a sub-group of The Cincinnati Writers Project), for your valuable feedback. As I write the words, creating poetic images, I hope to bring those words together with my other poetic images -- the photographic kind. I live in Milford, Ohio, near Cincinnati.
~Kimberly Ann Schwarz, poet and photographer
Life (Tides)
Smooth and rich,
With quiet and (calm),
It faithfully
Comes and goes -
Untouched, safe.
Approached and moved,
With thoughts and (ripples),
It faithfully
Becomes
Excited, involved.
Disturbed and forced,
With madness and (waves)
It faithfully
Claims
Loss, emptiness.
Smooth and rich,
With quiet and (calm),
It faithfully
Returns -
Touched, renewed.
© 1993 Kimberly Ann Schwarz
Ars Poetica
Poetry is the electricity
for my mind, heart, and soul.
Its energy invites me to dream,
to lose myself
within my life portrait:
Remembering my joys,
the generosity of life, and being alive,
and my sorrows, the maladies, the quarrels —
all that count in my life,
and why they do.
It is the gravity needed
to bring us all together along
our chosen paths, to outwalk,
go beyond what is known,
to know the undiscovered,
to weave common threads,
to be healed.
I sense the salt of my life
on my writer’s fingertips,
ready to power up my poetic voice.
© 2019 Kimberly Ann Schwarz