Flipping through my old notebooks I just found a poem I wrote at the age of 16, before the intense stuff that re-wrote my world in senior year. I have very few poems from that time remaining, but they show an endearing naivety, a fearless vulnerability I am suprised I could articulate (or even still had) in 10th grade. There is no date on the paper, but there are several clues to the time of its origin: the leaf imagery makes reference to a day I spent sitting under a golden-orange maple tree while I read Jonathan Livingston Seagull to a boy with whom I was deleriously in love (the 'dark eyes of Youth' are his). The literary style also strongly reflects the poets I adored -- the Meaningful Capitalization of Dickenson and the Whitmanesque ruminitive feel and diction of it all. The proudly striving confusion is another strong clue, since that paints the backdrop (and ocassionally the foreground) of adolescence. The name in the byline was mine when I wrote it.
Feel free to share the poem with anyone, as is always the case -- I can't seem to get up the gumption to submit my writing anywhere, so my childhood dream of professional publication seems about as distant now as it was then.
______________________________
Peace and panic brothers...
Death, dream, romance --
I cry to understand, but the dome of night can offer only echo.
I strive to understand, but failure drenched in exhaustion seems my final companion.
I call to you,
but Learning to Love reveals itself
Petal by Petal
As a mystery feuled by the glitter of tears.
Ah, peace!
Ah, me!
What am I but the flight of a fallen leaf,
Unfettered but unfree...
I call to him,
and Night in the dark eyes of Youth
has intrigued the song of my spirit.
Unto the sky I send again my trembling demand --
I seek Freedom --
I seek to be Free --
(And the rustle of the cracking leaves seems a simple laughter to the
rain of my confusion...)
That which is Truth, I follow you.
That which is Love,
I sing your pain complete.
-Maryanne DeHart, 1991
