Tag: poetry
Warmth, Light, and Hope
by The Cowl Editor on December 7, 2019
Portfolio
by Grace O’Connor ’22
The warm light filled the room as the fire crackled
Sweet sound of music brought smiles to the faces
The smell of cookies floated through the air
Darkness and powder snow surrounded the house
She laid out all the ornaments on the ground
As she smiled and laughed contagiously
The serene look in her eyes brought a wave of comfort
She was full of joy and contentment
She glowed of hope and belief
As she hung the ornaments on the tree
Full of awe while looking at the bright lights
It was the one time where light was felt at night
The most magical day of the year
A day where the world seems to slow down
People spread cheer and eliminate grief
A day where one can believe
Until that belief is gone
Excitement is contained in a wrapped box
Not the tangible love and happiness in the air
The real meaning disappeared as one tears the paper
There is a Lily kneeling
by The Cowl Editor on December 7, 2019
Portfolio
by Sean Tobin ’20
Behold a lily kneeling,
At stable’s cribside stays;
With beauteous music peeling,
His Child God, he will praise
Long after winter days;
And for his sons he pledges
His help and love always.
That light that brightens heaven
And plunges down to earth:
Which serves as hopeful leaven,
Which beckons all to mirth,
Excited by that birth;
The lily kneels yet deeper;
Sees now his meager worth.
That flow’r of radiance, lowly,
All men of virtue laud.
That lily kneeling wholly,
He turns up-right, now awed,
To see his Infant God,
And kneels still in the manger
To learn what path to trod.
Life at its Best
by Sarah D Kirchner on November 21, 2019
Portfolio
by Connor Christuk ’21 – Creative Writing Contest Honorable Mention
How important is a moment?
It all depends on if it’s your last
A moment among many is not much,
For a moment can only be so fast.
But if that moment were happy,
Would it mean so much more?
Do we exist to be happy?
Is life without happy moments a bore?
Or is life about feeling,
About trying and chore?
Is life about comfort,
Or rather about potential you explore?
Life at its Best
by The Cowl Editor on November 21, 2019
Portfolio
by Connor Christuk ’21 – Creative Writing Contest Honorable Mention
How important is a moment?
It all depends on if it’s your last
A moment among many is not much,
For a moment can only be so fast.
But if that moment were happy,
Would it mean so much more?
Do we exist to be happy?
Is life without happy moments a bore?
Or is life about feeling,
About trying and chore?
Is life about comfort,
Or rather about potential you explore?
Private Considerations of Pronouns
by The Cowl Editor on November 21, 2019
Portfolio
by Emma McLaughlin ’20 – Creative Writing Contest Winner
Your stare menaces from across the bed
as I strain, choking on my words, to answer your questions.
In my silence, you make me feel disbanded,
shapeless without a label.
Some construction of letters, he/she/they,
for others to define me, ‘correctly’ discuss me.
I grip the bedsheets in fistfuls as if trying to dig deep
but find this same nothing; nothing secure, or conclusive
beside the ache that I can’t give you,
this shell you want to shroud me in.
I don’t understand why I owe you this.
I scramble to find the line separating what in my identity
I determine and what is outside of my control.
I can’t decide your thoughts, your inner judgments,
those are a sacred world of your own.
And you bar me from solely submitting respect to this world,
badger me to define your thoughts!
Where is the authenticity in this discussion of modern identity?
Why even in intimacy can’t I unfold myself organically?
Your prying questions, selfish curiosity masked as queer recognition,
causes any chance of budding identity to vanish completely
and my body to crumble, falling away from yours,
hit by bullets of inquiry entwined with accusation.
They shoot straight through me, reverberating off the walls,
leaving the room’s air thick with your crowding echoes.
The Generation of Speaking out and the Spoken Word
by Sarah D Kirchner on November 21, 2019
Portfolio
by Nicole Patano ’22 –
I’m an advocate of nonviolence, so I don’t want to keep beating the dead horse.
Because the more we hear, the less we feel, the same we act.
And we forget to react and retract.
It’s a fact that our actions speak louder than our words.
The silence is deafening.
If you were to ask our sentiments, I would caution the extent to which you do so.
We’re more opinionated and liberated than others,
Free from the “dams that block the flow of social progress.”
Damn. Martin Luther King, Jr. said this when he digressed from the social norm
Of separate but equal, which was really separate and unequal.
We’ve gotten over that Little Rock; now’s not the time to stop and start treating the
Mountains like molehills.
The world is still turning, and we’re still learning.
We’re all the more deserving of being taken to task.
And I ask, “Oh say, can you see?”
Or has an eye for an eye made you blind?
Wasn’t it Plato who said that we have to leave our cave to see beyond the shadows?
And somehow after 6,000 years, our minds are still like clay.
Concrete is so passé because if you’re stuck in your ways
There’s no longer a spark to ignite your flame.
So we say, “May your fire burn forever.”
And don’t let anyone put it out.
Don’t let anyone put you down.
They say the sky is the limit.
But if my calculations are correct: the limit doesn’t exist.
So why should we define ourselves by what is possible
When we truly are inexhaustible?
And we may be full of hot air, but heat rises and expands.
Travel the zephyr, ride the wave, Zeppelin.
They saved the best for last.
Kaleidoscope Vision
by The Cowl Editor on November 15, 2019
Portfolio
by Sam Ward ’21
How do we propel ourselves into the unknown?
Without fear.
Without doubt.
How, without shaking in our skin at the thought of what could go wrong,
or plucking heartstrings to play hopeful songs?
How do we plunge into strange waters,
when the thoughts are white noise?
How do we pursue ambition’s depths,
when muddled minds teeter like defective toys?
Clear vision deters focus
like we need sunshine clarity
to obtain knowledge complexities: it’s
not true.
We both know that.
Empty screens collect lines racing faster than the click of a pen,
or the tap tap tap of the keyboard
and just like that:
Fear is famished.
Doubt exonerated.
Strike all the right notes and we’ll dive right in
Without fear.
Without doubt.
If we wrote to please a bunch of poets,
we’d pause the present and paint a prettier picture like,
picture this:
someday we’ll be off for no other than reason
and we’ll prove the producing purpose,
But introspection is influenced in the eye of the beholder so we behold the truth
while alpha waves synchronize kaleidoscope focus,
Without fear,
Without doubt…
On a Train
by The Cowl Editor on November 15, 2019
Portfolio
by Elizabeth McGinn ’21
Flashes whirling past, face pressed against the glass,
eyes adjust to a moving landscape from a train.
A glimpse at strange moments as we pass,
waving adieu to the lonely buildings that remain.
Littered with flecks of dust and drops of rain,
the plexiglass portal offers rare sights
to me, the voyeur: industrial sites
and crowded subway lines, a city block
of crumbling tenements, a vacant landfill,
a seaport; fishermen socializing on the dock,
coat-cloaked city dwellers fighting fall chill,
and a dilapidated, olden windmill.
Losing track of time watching the mundane,
spying the lives that aren’t mine on a train.
Day and Night
by The Cowl Editor on November 14, 2019
Portfolio
by Sarah Heavren ’21
It’s always darkest
Before the dawn
Darkness is still there
Before it’s gone.
There’s always the hope
Of a new day.
But there’s still the wait
While the night fades.
Good things are to come.
There’s still the fight
To get to the day,
Escape the night.
Darkness has become
Like an old friend.
But enjoy the day
Before night comes again.
It Slowly Slipped Away
by The Cowl Editor on November 14, 2019
Portfolio
by Grace O’Connor ’22
She looked in the mirror and took a deep breath
Today was the day her life would change
She looked down at her newly polished nails as her heart drummed in her chest
Time was going by painfully slow but too fast
She stood up slowly and walked down the stairs in silence
The silence in the air weighed down with every step
The last time she saw her she was in her arms, the most beautiful thing alive
It felt hard to breath every time she thought about her
She sipped the coffee slowly as her mind kept running rapidly
She wanted more than anything another chance
A new relationship, one that she could cherish rather than one bear the emptiness
Of a relationship that was nonexistent
The ring of the doorbell echoed through the house
She stood up slowly and walked to the door at the end of the hall
She put her hand on the cold door knob and twisted it hesitantly
She gasped when she saw her face
It was the day that changed everything
One that she had tried to erase from her memories for years
But also a day she could never get back, all the emotions that she had buried inside
Sometimes would bubble up to the surface
All she kept was that one photo
That one memory
It slowly slipped away
Until that one moment, the day that changed everything