Creative Writing assignment #1: Write an ode. (It has to meet certain guidelines..) Well, here goes nothing. I’m baring myself to the internet world. Woot.
Ode to PM Beach By Julia Hobart There’s a spot on the water that contains my thoughts. By now they are tinged with the hickory scent of smoldering charcoal, Lingering after an unusually warm July evening. Some nights, when the final lamp in my parents’ bedroom is turned off, I pop out my screen with a teeny click. It falls to the feathery black ground and stays put, like a frightened lost rabbit in a forest of weeds. I listen. Nothing. Now I may roam—as unrestricted and breathless as a bat. Spastically flicking and spitting at dusty cobwebs, I fight my way to the vacant silence of pavement. Darkness enfolds me in garments of anonymity, and, Inconspicuous, I reign over my world. I race up the hill on my quiet toes, and am urged onward By commanding cedars, their green, faux-leather sprigs gesturing chivalrously to the main road. I almost don’t recognize my route. Its face is different every time, matching its mossy bramble hue to that of my thoughts. They all share the same destination anyways. Then. I am here. I stand before the Eighth Natural Wonder of the World. And for now, it’s mine. At 10 AM, at noon, at dinnertime, it can belong to Saints and sinners, florists and real-estate agents, teachers and mechanics alike. But here, espied by angels of the cosmos, and sheltered by the Presence of that ever-expanding, cerulean night sky, I alone am granted a moment, Saved by the flattery of my helpless attentiveness. I kick off my sandals; hike up my raggedy sweatpants until I resemble a rice farmer. One toe, one foot, both feet, my knees. The water hungrily laps up the dryness of my skin with its cold tongue, Its reed whiskers tickling my thighs. My heart steadily quickens At the crisp mixture of lake water, goose poop, and mud. Forget other ‘precious’ springs. This Is my holy water. I am minuscule, but important. Lost but unperturbed. As Hallucinogen-induced and liberal as this sounds, I am one with the world or Something. A slight reprieve. Infinity fills me not with terror but with love. It’s caged by the messy angularities of the silhouettes of cedar and ifr And its sympathetic underbelly shows. And that’s it. The closest I’ll ever come to Religion, transcendentalism, mediation, or what have you. My moment of near-existentialism has passed. “Come back!” the humble liquid cries. But I must go. I wipe the last, clinging bit of grit from between my toes, Grab my shoes and I’m off, Trudging back up that majestic hill alone. This time my thoughts are accompanied by the Symphony of squeaks and squelches from my dripping flip flops.
I met a girl who sang the blues
And I asked her for some happy news
But she just smiled and turned away
I went down to the sacred store
Where I’d heard the music years before
But the man there said the music wouldn’t play
And in the streets the children screamed
The lovers cried, and the poets dreamed
But not a word was spoken
The church bells all were broken
And the three men I admire most
The Father, Son and the Holy Ghost
They caught the last train for the coast
The day the music died
“
| — | An excerpt from American Pie, by Don McLean |
There is a place where the sidewalk ends
and before the street begins,
and there the grass grows soft and white,
and there the sun burns crimson bright,
and there the moon-bird rests from his flight
to cool in the peppermint wind.
Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black
and the dark street winds and bends.
Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow
we shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow
and watch where the chalk-white arrows go
to the place where the sidewalk ends.
Yes we’ll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
and we’ll go where the chalk-white arrows go,
for the children, they mark, and the children, they know,
the place where the sidewalk ends.
“
| — | Where the Sidewalk Ends, Shel Silverstein |
