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Happy Poetry Friday! Today’s poem is a throw-back poem from my series using famous poems as models for my own original poems. The model poem I used was Won’t You Celebrate With Me by Lucile Clifton.  Clifton’s poem really inspired me and I remember I wrote my first draft in a fast white heat and was surprised the next day when I chose to not edit much at all. Sometimes the muse is in alignment with me as I type.
 
I now consider this poem one of my personal anthems.
 

Celebrate With Me

won’t you celebrate with me
what I have become
a woman strong and brave
enough to speak her mind,
usually,
a wife, a lover
daughter, mother
a friend to few
I hold dear
a non-friend
to some
for reasons I don’t understand
born into confusion
about how to become
myself
how to trust I had
arrived
in all my glory
before barreling past
my destination
forgetting
not knowing
I was enough
I am enough
I AM ENOUGH
come celebrate
with me that
I have climbed
my mountains
cheered the sunrise
knowing, knowing
yes
I am stronger
at all the broken places.

—Susan Taylor Brown

 
 

Listen to me read this poem.

 
 
Last week’s Poetry Friday contribution was an original poem called Poetry Waits for Me.
 
 
Amy has the complete Poetry Friday round-up over at the Poem Farm.

 
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