Welcome to Poetically Yours. Poetically Yours showcases poems by northern Illinois poets. This week’s poet is Clare Kron.
Kron is a biology instructor at Northern Illinois University who teaches a variety of courses featuring cell, molecular, and genetic subject matter. Her major interests are teaching, organic gardening, writing, and cooking. As an environmentalist, she consistently promotes sustainable living options.
Here’s her poem “Yo-yo.”
I could see it as a challenge--
but it’s not; it’s my life.
Up and down, and up and down,
and up can be good or bad
and so can down.
Up is all the peaks but the climbing, too.
The success—which is all I saw
When around me was the failure
of others who tried but got trampled
beneath my striving to the top --of what?—
Others’ opinions of my worth?
A goal of a twenty-something
that lay in broken pieces
on the puzzle board of my life?
No, I prefer down:
The missteps that honed
today’s posture,
upright and straight-forward.
Falling, falling, and falling
until I learned that getting up—by myself—
was not a win.
Broken, weeping, and passed over
in my failure,
I became light and fragile but whole,
in the arms of the many who helped me up.
