Twenty Years of a Voice of a Writer

Sometimes you have to look backward before you can look forward. I am at a work conference this week and was worried I would not be able to post anything.  As a writer though it doesn't take much to trigger a conversation that makes you think.  In this instance, I was talking with a colleague and we got into the discussion about how a person's writing style changes.  If you look at what you wrote twenty years ago would it sound different? Would it seem different? Would you be able to see the same writer has written it?

Everyone and everything changes.  A writer grows in style and form.  A writer also experiences life.  What was experienced twenty years ago may not be the experience now.  In each moment we are naive; in the look behind at the moment we are sage.  I do think a writer changes but I think the voice of the writer stays in tact.  I think there is a voice in each of us that still shows even if our style and form has changed. 

I will let you see for yourself.  Here are two poems I wrote twenty years ago.