Karina Ramos

The Best Is Yet To Come

Darkness revolves around me.

Uncertainty holds on tight.

Voices call out in earnest;

Yet they are forever left behind.

Memories echo in the background.

Those days past are out of reach,

but they’ll forever be with me.

Foggy phantoms engraved within;

Make up who I am today.

The past will never be forgotten.

It’ll propel me forward to the unknown.

Blazing the path into the future;

Conscious of my every weakness,

believing in my strengths.

Knowing for a fact

The best is yet to come.

[Revision Account]

How It Started

Memories echo in the background

They are forever out of reach

Cannot return to yesterday

I can’t return to those days

But they make up who I am

I won’t forget those lessons

They’ll propel me forward

I’ll walk into the unknown darkness

With courage and faith by my side

I know in my heart

That the best is yet to come

This is what I started with. The image of memories echoing just stuck in my head so that was the first line in the poem. Then I thought of what I could do with memories. Well memories shape who we are and what we become. It is because of our memories or experiences that we do what we do today. Yet, not all memories are good but to ignore them would just be like trying to ignore a vital part of yourself. So they shouldn’t be forgotten. Nor should we allow our past experiences to drag us down. Time will not stand still and neather should we. We should keep move in the hopes that things will get better and learing from what’s happened before.

After this first draft I wasn’t happy about the way it flowed. So I rearranged some lines, added others, and completely tossed out some. What I ended up was this:

Darkness revolves around me

Uncertainty holds on tight

Voices call out in earnest

Yet they are forever left behind

Memories echo in the background

Those days past are out of reach

But they’ll forever be with me

Foggy phantoms engraved within

Make up who I am today

The past will never be forgotten

It’ll propel me forward to the unknown

Blazing the path into the future

Conscious of my every weakness

And believing in my strengths

Knowing for a fact

The best is yet to come

By this point time was running out and I had to show it to someone for critic even though I still wasn’t too happy with it. I showed it to four people, two of which I’m not sure how much they count as they were my parents, but the other two not family related individual had more suggestions than my parents.

They both pointed out the lack of punctuation in the poem which I had no idea how to go about but thanks to one of their suggestions has been fixed. They both commented on how they liked the flow of the poem which has stayed the same.

However,  that is the last thing they both agree on. One of them mentioned that he would like to see the poem divided into stanzas while the other thought it looked fine as it was. I liked the idea of stanzas but again I wasn’t sure how to go about it. So I used perhaps not the most scientific approach to it and just stated putting spaces between the lines until it felt right. I’m not convinced that it looks right but it kind of feels right.

The other thing my two critics were at odds with each other was the imagery. One like it very much while the other thought I should create more concrete images. In this case I thought the images although at times sketchy at best because of the abstractness of the words was good. I imagine the narrator walking in a dark wood or something with fog around him shaping itself into people or events of his past and the sound of the wood sounding like the voices of the past. So in the end the imagery stayed the same as well.