Room 115

Room 115
finished 4.30.08


As I stared out the window,
The snow falls on the rustic trees,
Shedding purity on an aging world.
The weather, though cold, is the type that warms the inside.
The trees in innocence stood,
With a few lonely leaves left in frigid memory of the summer past.

As it begins to thicken I’m left with the quiet of mid-day.
Memories of hot chocolate and snow forts take me from the world I now dwell in
And go to a world more familiar,
A world where the hurt seems to dissipate under the beauty of my childhood.
The memories so near to me speak,
Singing a joyful tune of laughter and the running feet of chilled children
Entering the cozy living room after hours of arctic playtime and adventure.

Looking through the window
I gaze down into a stream, flowing sweetly through the heart of a forest.
It’s calming to me…I can almost hear its bubbling,
Soft and slow from the thickness of a serene winter chill.
The edges curl up into a curtain of icicles,
Forming into beaded sculptures crafted by the Artist himself
With such curves and abstract,
In this ominous glory even Picasso seems like a dunce.

Looking through the window
The birds call to me, urging me to join them in this mystic wonderland.
I now see the window with new eyes--
The crossbars look to me very much like prison bars,
And the white-washed walls of the classroom have become my cell,
Locked from the outside into a world of tests, professors, all-nighters, and too much caffeine.
I realize that these walls now separate me
From the playground of innocence and brilliance just outside the window
Where the birds of the air and foxes in the forest become my teachers.
The teachers on the inside have become my warden, my judge, my jury,
Sentencing me to years of sorrow and unhappiness that bar me into reality,
Keeping me from the mythical, the imaginary,
Focusing my time on physics and math--
Such droll subjects that make Father Time an executioner.

Speak to me once more oh fantasy, oh lovely literature,
For your pages are so unidentified to my lonely fingers.
How dearly they long to caress your smooth,
Sacred beauty they fell in love with so long ago.
Oh Narcissus, you found no beauty like such held in these books.
Why, oh why must I focus on such pale, lifeless idolatry of ridiculed subject matter?
Oh Forest, oh bubbling brook,
Yes, songbird and squirrel,
Tell winter to release me and we shall laugh together in Harmony once more.
Shatter the window; tear down the walls that hold captive of my heart and mind.
Free these hands of their chains so they may craft and adore such beauties
Untold, unstudied—an art no scholar can master.
I shall leave these four walls in this room with desks and chairs;
I’ll stop looking nostalgically out the window
And become a part of the scenery that lies just behind the glass.

--Serenity Elizabeth