Shipwrecked by Pat Boran

It used to be simple:
shipwrecked, you turned the boat over
and started from scratch,

your new home the nave
of a church, its prow pointing back
over the ocean

towards your previous life.
You lived with the loss,
did what you could, carried on.

You learned from mistakes,
your foolish belief
in the big talk of others;

you built things from bits
and from bones, what the sea offered up.
Now you're convinced

every sail is your saviour,
every noise is a plane
crossing the vastness of ocean

over and back, all these years later
still searching for you, the sole
survivor, waiting to tell them precisely

where it all went so wrong.

-Pat Boran

This poem stood out to me, honestly, because I could understand it. I was online looking for a good poem and I found a website called, "Poems.com" and this poem was the poem of the day. Now, I tend to be someone who isn't too awesome at interpreting poems (which is the whole point of this new part of my blog, besides the fact that you guys get something else to read besides the book we're gonna be doing), but after reading this one, it  made COMPLETE sense!

Well, everyone interprets poems differently, but this is what I understood the poem to mean: The poem is called shipwrecked and yes, it does describe a wrecked ship with a lone survivor (being you), but I think that the shipwreck represents a point where you may feel that your LIFE is falling apart, where you did something that "ruined" you or destroyed an opportunity.

Then you're forced to, "start from scratch" and move on, "[learning] from mistakes" that lead to your whole shipwreck in the first place. Well, at least you try to, but you still hang on to that time before the disaster, you know? The time when everything went right, when you were on that "yellow brick path" in life.

From time to time, you hope that people still remember the old you; who you were before everything went wrong and that they haven't judged you or put you in a negative light after what happened. You really hope that certain people and things haven't left you behind. Lines 15-17 say, "Now you're convinced/ every sail is your savior,/ every noise is a plane." This is because you hold on to the possibility that you could come back and explain yourself and set things straight, "...waiting to tell them precisely where it all went so wrong."

I think that we can all relate to that "Shipwrecked" time in our lives. You know, I remember a time when I was "on top of the world." I was at a new school, made a bunch of new friends, and my grades were really starting to blossom; then problems arose. People would start rumors about other people and point their fingers at me and then that grew into something that I just wasn't prepared to deal with. I fell apart in more ways than one. I lost all of my friends because they felt as if my drama was going to end up drawing them in. I lost all of my respect because I was teetering on insanity and the line between being fine and bursting into tears was extremely thin. My grades were dropping; I came from have straight A's to dropping to a C- in english, my best subject. I was a wreck (pun intended) and my parents decided to take me out of the school . At first I was upset at my parents; I wanted to convince them, convince myself, that I was okay. That I was going to deal with my problems BY MYSELF and that I didn't need help. What I was really concerned with is that the people that I left behind at the school were left with a memory of Katrina Lowell that didn't do me justice. "Katrina? You mean the weak loser that left her school because she was too much of a wuss to deal with those other girls. Yeah, I remember her." That's exactly what I was afraid of, and you know what? It came true. Those other girls were up at the school feeling pretty "swag" about themselves. They had won and their reward was that I was gone but what about me? I was destroyed.

Well, that's how I USED to see it, but then I "started from scratch" and tried again. Look at me now; some are shocked when they hear about that side of me because I pride myself in being a strong, confident girl who never backs down from bullies, but you know what? It took a shipwreck for me to take a second look at my materials and build an even stronger ship; a battleship that didn't need to return to that homeland to redeem itself, but instead charted a new route to a new, better life.

I really like this poem. It's simple, of course, but like most poems, it doesn't need to be complex to have a deeper meaning. What I would like is for YOU guys to tell me what this poem means to YOU. You don't have to use your name or even have it posted on the blog if you don't want it to, but I'm really interested to know if and/or how this poem impacted you. Happy reading!

Love Always <3,
Katrina Lowell