The most enchanting piece of writing

This epic poem found me and never left

I am dropping in here a few days early (you usually hear from me on Sunday) because I am entering this piece into a contest my friend Tara at Enchanted in America is running. Tara asked her readers to write about a piece of literature that enchanted them. I didn’t even need to think about it because this particular poem landed in my heart decades ago and never left. It holds a great deal of power for me so I do not share this lightly.

According to the dictionary to be enchanted means to be ‘utterly captivated’, to hold one’s attention.  Many light years ago I was captivated by a poem I came across in my college English class. It seems magical to me that this piece grabbed me the way it did given the context of my life at the time.

Looking back I think it was a foreshadowing of things to come. The poem pierced through the outer layers of a young adult, a college student newly on her own, one who was honing her skills as a top-notch partier and fun-getter. Poetry, or depth of any kind, w…