At the dVerse Poets Pub today readers were challenged to take a piece of prose and turn it into poetry. The prompt suggested finding an existing piece of prose in the public domain, but I was uncomfortable with doing something like that with another’s writing, even if it is in the public domain. So I went to a short story I wrote a while back called The Crossroads, and used the first three paragraphs as the starting point for this poem. I actually think it works better as a poem than as the original short story.
The Crossroads
Sarah stared
through the picture window
across the perfectly
manicured lawn
She and John
settled here
twenty years ago
It seemed like forever
Once she was happy here
but now a feeling
of discontent
and despair
crept over her
She knew
there was more to life
than what they had
Beyond the blooming
rose bushes
and the Sycamore tree
was the crossroads
She gazed thoughtfully
down the narrow
bumpy
dirt road
She knew where it led
Pure beauty
was found
down that road
She longed to move
away from the crossroads
down that dirt road
to a small house
with everything needed
to be content
But John
wouldn’t listen
His eye was on
a big mansion
up the highway
So here they stayed
at the crossroads
Neither willing
to go with the other
Neither willing
to go on alone