For Danielle, with love
.
Breaking heart
Taking future
Making mockery
I doubt the happy start,
wrapped in a painful ending,
rending all I believed,
feeling deceived
by the life we’d conceived.
Paths onward wending,
sending me,
setting me free.
Taking me,
creating me,
letting me
be,
Breaking past,
Taking a stance,
Making me dance.
“There will come a time when you believe everything is finished. That will be the beginning.”
― Louis L’Amour, Lonely on the Mountain
The end is so close
that I can reach out and touch
the hands of the clock,
tick-tocking away this last class.
A day more of typing
the degree will be done.
This stage of the journey complete,
where will I go from here?
Tonight,
we’ll laugh until tears streak our cheeks
and remember all those moments
that made this a special place.
But beneath the laughter
will be the melancholy knowing
that with these leavings
we are left to try to rebuild something new.
I suppose we’ll be okay,
but I can’t help but wish you’d stay.
.
.
.
(End of the school year. Staff leaves. New staff arrives. Some years it’s just so fabulously synergistic that it is particularly depressing to see the end).
Our graduating students chose the theme of CARNIVAL! for their Graduation ceremony today. I wrote a poem for the teacher they asked to be the special speaker. Here it is:
ERS GRAD 2015 POEM
A carnival is quite a bore if you are there alone
And surely melancholy could seep into your bones
But in the night, with all your friends
A carnival’s great fun, the spinning lights will mesmerize
The laughter never ends.
Cherish time together
at this your graduation
Your memories and histories are worth the celebration.
You may live far apart as you journey through your lives
But always choose what’s positive
and you will choose to thrive.
For life can be a carnival, it’s fun and fearful, too
Remember Eagle River,
as we’ll fondly think of you.
I woke this morning
pleasantly foggy and
imagined my day.
What workshops will I attend?
Yes. That one. This one.
Then I stretched my mind
into clarity and realized
conference is over;
everyone has gone home.
It was a melancholy moment,
before the smile,
savouring memories.
.
.
.
.
A memory like this one. My dear husband, grinning broadly with Diana Gabaldon beside him outside the conference banquet. This is the first time he’s met an author whose work he admires. I’m laughing because I just had to sprint down the hall to get into the photo. Despite being with Diana all weekend and snapping many photos of her with/for other people, this moment was the only one I had taken with her myself this year.
P.S. The counter says that this is my 1400th blog post. Nice to celebrate with two of my favourite people! 😉
Shawn L. Bird 