Away from Regret

Regret does not have to be

A permanent wall, cold concrete

Built to trap the broken and assaulted.

Do not cultivate terror or fury;

Neither provides healing

For a scarred, bruised soul.

Prune the branches of despair

And open a window to the divine.

Angelic light allows redemption to bloom.

**Process notes**  The prompt from Imaginary Gardens with Real Toads was to create a "poetic sketch" using groups of words. You can find more information on this prompt here. Normally, I rely on free writing heavily when writing, but I've started using a similar process when working with the wordle words from The Sunday Whirl.  I simply write the words in "Poet's Sketchbook" and then end up with a bunch of squiggly lines tracking how I connect the words.  I basically did the same thing with this prompt, only I had several categories of words on the paper and then followed the connections that popped into my head.  I realize this sounds just a bit convoluted, so I'll include a couple of photos from my sketchbook that may clarify things.

This was my attempt at creating a poem sketch as based on the prompt.

My poet's sketchbook 

These were a portion of the notes I used to write my recent poem "A Modern Take on Fairy Tales."