Day 9: Think Back {National Poery Month & 30 Day Blog Challenge}

Up to this point I haven't really been trying that hard with the poetry portion. Reading it or writing it. I think I'm not taking my own challenge very seriously!

Today's poem is by Cleveland native Kevin Prufer, titled "What I Gave the 20th Century." It's good; I like it. I think this one and "Driving While Black",  by Mwatabu Okantah, have been my favorites thus far.

The prompt is specifically:

How was your 20th century? Write a poem titled “My 20th Century,” using at least three quatrains (four-line stanzas). Or, if you are up for the challenge, in the form of a sonnet. You may use rhyme, slant rhyme, or no rhyme.

I was going to attempt to do the quatrain challenge for this one. Thankfully they linked to a page to help those of us who are poetry challenged. As can be seen, I didn't go with the quatrain after all. Does it have a name for the way I did it? I don't know.
I don't care for the title choice; I like Prufer's so I'll vary mine from that.

What I Have Been Given

What was I given when into this world I arrived?

A mother to hold me, when I laughed or when I cried.

A grandmother, who writes to me even now when her eyes are tired.

After that I had two sisters, who tough on me they may have been,

But cared for me when they needed to, even now; my sisters, Melissa and Lynn.

And then a boy who loved me before I was even eighteen; he’s stuck with me through thick and thin.

I have been given my little ones, who’ve grown to be almost as tall as me.

One will always be my ‘little’ girl but the tallest in our small family now is Jeffery.

Then the friends who’ve come and gone, because what the future holds we cannot foresee.

Many opportunities have passed my way; the choices I made, were they for the best?

Every circumstance I am glad to have had, every person I am glad to have met.

Would I do things differently? there are none that I regret.

Time for the memories with people I have cared about, and those I have not

For the purpose to mold me, to shape me into the person I have been wrought.

At times I have taken it for granted but the older I get I know it is for more than naught. 

In the end I think what I have been given is mostly time.

No matter what, I know that in the end it will be fine.

The choices, they are not completely mine.