Poems

I'm back! Sorry to be incommunicado for the last week or so, but life got, shall we say, hectic. No excuse specifically. Just life. Quiz Bowl, homework, drama, homework, violin, homework, planning for upcoming spring sports, homework. The usual...drama....that goes on in a high schooler's life. Perhaps some of you remember those days...if you do, post me a story about it!
Not quite sure what to post about now, so I'll just put up a couple of poems that I wrote at the beginning of the year:

“The Infant”

She lies on the ground, smiling, and gurgling at me.
Just at me.
Our eyes meet, the eldest cousin and the youngest,
And for a moment there is perfect peace in the world.

A few minutes later,
She tires of lying on the ground
And starts to cry.

She wails, and I lift her into my arms
And we walk.
All around the ground floor of the house,
Outside, we smell the fragrance of the summer flowers
Mixing with the chlorine smell of the pool water.

Back inside we go.
She’s settled comfortably on my shoulder now,
Completely relaxed, completely trusting.
I start to hum an old lullaby
That my mother sang to me,
And her eyes drift slowly closed.

Like a little rag doll in my arms,
She flops and slumbers,
And my heart fills up and overflows
With love for this infant
Who has come to trust me enough
That she will sleep in my arms.

My arms soon become exhausted,
But I am reluctant to let her go.
So I settle down in a chair,
Talk to her brother,
Talk to her parents,
And let her rest.


"Outsider"

In the corner
Like a black cat at midnight
Stands the outsider.
Unnoticed by most, she quietly listens to the roar of conversation around her.
Then turns her attention back to her book.

Not a cheerleader, not an athlete.
Not a genius, but not dumb either.
She is just there.
Another warm body in the mass of people in school.

You ask the other kids if they know her.
They say, “Who?
Oh, that tall, dark-haired kid.
What’s her name again?”

She pretends not to care.
But she really does.
She is not a block of wood.
She is merely a pigeon among peacocks.
An outsider.