Black On White Poem by Darlene Walsh

The words were black sitting starkly on white
They stared back at me as I read what I wrote
But what did they really say, I wish I knew
The words came from my head as I wrote them down
And I thought they made sense but now I frown
Because put all together they look like a maze

I was writing about summer grass and fall maize
The colors of spring and winter in snow white
The sun had risen brightly washing away moon's frown
And it inspired me to write the words that I wrote
I thought of the four seasons and had put it down
Onto paper using words that I thought I knew

I went back to my yard that I thought I knew
But it had all changed like walking a maze
I looked up to the sky blue and then back down
In a pond I saw stars in black sky with moon white
The sun was sitting high in the sky as I wrote
Yet up there I also saw night and the moon's frown

The thought confused me and made my face frown
And I tried hard to think of places I knew
When I was young and the words were new that I wrote
They were words of sadness, fear and life was a maze
My friend Death gave me thoughts of black, not white
And sadly I knew that soon I would be six feet down

The painful days were long and I felt very down
And my false friends smiles made me frown
Life sat gray in the clouds instead of white
A secret I kept that no one else knew
Each day was like walking lost in a maze
There was only sadness in all I wrote

But then one day I realized all was wrong in what I wrote
Life was good and should be going up rather than down
I began to see things in a light that lifted the maze
And even in the night's sky the moon lost its frown
All my devils faded away leaving behind something I knew
Life new to me, not black but a dazzling white

It took long to grow out of that sad maze of a frown
But from that moment I no longer wanted to be down but I knew
Words I wrote would always now be black on white