Yes I have sat alone
in an empty room.
Yes I have seen the sunrise
explode across the horizon.
Yes I have heard the crickets
scream secrets at each other
on hot summer days when birds
stayed home and wouldn’t fly.
I too have walked the forest
with dogwoods blooming bright,
pink petals flashing against
their shining cloak of green.
I have snapped a million twigs
from a thousand maple trees
and have smelled the musky sap
that wanders through the boughs.
I have tromped of blindly
down paths foot-high with drying leaves
and have wondered at the music
as they crunch beneath my feet,
a crowd of cymbals crashing in my ears.
I have tried to read the road map
of the cloudless azure sky;
I have tried to find the travel logs
of the silent listless stars
careening through their crowded void;
I have watched the ocean never stop.
I have stopped and scratched my brow
a hundred times at all these things,
but in the end can only smile
and touch, and smell, and hear,
and see some more of what there is.
And that is all.
Michael McIntyre
Hampden-Sydney 1986
Some juvenalia from many years ago. Every year I challenge my seventh grade students to write poems of their own. Not fair, of course, unless I lay myself bare too. I always read them this that I wrote in college. It is, admittedly, overwrought. But, interestingly enough, the students get some of the more intentional devices. So for that I consider it useful. They even think it's good. Ah, youth.
ReplyDelete