Last week with Mr. Raman’s 7th and 8th graders at Waters Elementary we thought about the practice of wishing on a star, and wrote a poem to something much larger than our own lives using personification and questions. We read Percy Shelley’s “A Lament” for inspiration. The poem starts, “O world! O life! O time! / On whose last steps I climb, / Trembling at that where I stood before; / When will return the glory of your prime?”
Mr. Raman
7th Grade
Untitled
by Anastasia N.
How do you do it
How do you put up with
people
saying
“wish upon a star”
That this credit does not go to you
How do you do it
How do you put up with
people
staring
at you the one time you pass by
How do you not care
or maybe you do
do you want to change orbit
a little too close to earth
give people a little scare
How do you do it, comet.
Untitled
by Henry H.
Yo, star was good with it, you
able to break dance?
A Star
by Colette R.
Up in the sky shimmering in the night
Some enjoy just admiring your beauty
Others use you to express their hopes and dreams
Every night they say, “I wish, I wish upon a star.”
Sometimes the wishes come true
How can you tell we are wishing on you?
Is there an alert?
Or is it just an instinct?
How long have you been granting wishes?
Since recently or the beginning of time?
Have your wishes changed at all?
Or do you just don’t mind?
Mr. Raman
8th Grade
The Sun
by Sofia A.
Sun,
how do you shine so bright?
The days keep getting darker
yet you still shine.
Do you ever have bad days?
Or feel lonely?
Do you feel like your days will ever
come to a stop?
You shine so bright, but no one
knows if you always feel bright.
They only know the sparkling, shiny light they see.
Great Blue Cover
by Gracelyn C.
Blue
Blueness for miles, but
Why must you hide under an opaque sheet
Instead of a translucent one that would let us into your wonder
The vastness of life and prosperity confounds
us even more than your secretive surface.
Where the brightest of sunshine and darkest of dwellings collide,
we’ve only peered into your majestic curtain of fascination.
Untitled
by Stella D.
Drifting in an endless pattern,
weathered rock once part of nothing,
slowly watching the universe.
Do you even pay attention to us,
do you watch us live and die,
working to eventually destroy ourselves?
Do you care,
care that one day, like everything else, you will end too?
When our time comes will you still be,
or will you stay an unmoving mass,
looming in the distance?
Night Sky
by Cora L.
I look up to you,
Spread like a blanket
Across my limited vision.
I see the stars that
Dot your surface,
The moons and planets
That live in your maternal harbor.
I ask, how big is your family?
Who is the oldest?
Who is the youngest?
I am met with a grinning discontent,
As my questions are earthly and naive.
I ask, are we alone?
Is this race of humans all there is?
And I am met with comedic laughter above.
I ask, what is the meaning of life?
What is the meaning of death?
And for the first time,
The night sky is truly silent
And introspective,
And truly, quite sad
As the truth evades us all.
How are you so beautiful?
by Anonymous
The way you smile
The way you laugh
The way you can turn my bad day upside down
I can’t describe when I see you
What I feel at the time
Is it love?
I don’t think so,
It must be something more.
