A High School Student Describes the Mature Years  

   

          William J. Small is Karen Topham's student at Lake Forest High School, Lake Bluff, Illinois. I matched his poem with one of my photos to create a page in my upcoming collection, Reflections: A Collection of Poems, Photos, and More. Then I added the quotation by Emily Bronte to help students generate ideas for their writing. Feel free to download this and other poems and photos in this blog for use in your classrooms.

          Small's poem is just one of more than 130 others included in Reflections along with carefully selected photos. The work includes not only poems and photos by students, but also contributions by teachers and other writer-photographers. You can see more samples at  www.starteaching.com. Click on "Latest Issue November."

"Every leaf speaks bliss to me./Fluttering from the autumn tree."  -Emily Bronte

Self-Identification in the Crinkling of Fall

 

The light glazes the treetops

                          A crisp crinkling ripple in my ear                                         

I splash in the wind,

I grasp for the aftertaste of the moment,

Left behind by the blink of my eye

Like a mossy rock it slips through my mind

Deeper and deeper away

In a crescendo it once again erupts

As I feel the light shivering of the grass,

Against my restful body

I spin along with the Earth

As it tells me all its secrets

                                               Of love, lost, and etc.                                                            

The only sounds trickle from a sparrow

Scatter from a squirrel

Tickle from a falling leaf

To create a stream of sounds

                                                                                   

Oh Fall!

Bring change and beauty, as I grow old!

And now as I bath in the angst of coming maturity

I pray to resemble the subtle whispery kisses of you.

                        -William J. Small

Poem Copyright © 2010 by William J. Small

Photo Copyright©2010 by Hank Kellner

Write What You See and Prufrock Press

Published by Cottonwood Press in 2009, Write What You See: 99 Photos To Inspire Writing by Hank Kellner is now marketed by Prufrock Press, http://www.prufrock.com.  This thought-provoking collection contains photographs and a wide variety of inventive writing prompts to motivate students.

     Written by a veteran of the Korean War and retired educator who has served as an English Department supervisor and adjunct associate professor of English at the community college level, Write What you See includes a CD-Rom and a special section telling how teachers nationwide use photos to inspire writing. 118 pages, 8 1/2 X 11, Softbound, ISBN 978-1-877673-83-2, Grades 7-12, $24.95