light shines between the branches of the boudreaux 's willow tree, through the tiny bones of bird corpses strung high from extended branches like second leaves. at the trunk of the old willow sleeps the boudreaux 's only son, back pressed to the cold dirt. face turned towards the heavens, light casting shadows on the boy 's sharp features. the wind sings to him like hymns of a choir. it 's the closest to paradise the young boy will get, between the ominous visions and coffins of random strangers. no more voices of the dead whispering in his ear. only a soft melody plays like background music. the willow tree is the only thing not completely dead on the boudreaux 's property. it 's vibrate with life except the dead hanging from it.
harley can feel the change coming, feel the air shift around him. the wind picking up enough to stir him from his slumber. watching the leaves fall from the tree, branches grow and come alive in horror. bird corpses turning into live ones. as if reliving their last moments, before the life left their tiny bodies. if he squeezes his eyes shut then maybe the nightmares will go away. he closes them tighter until his vision goes white. the wind dies around him, everything goes silent. he keeps his eyes closed in fear, afraid of what he might see if he opens them.
a soft touch kisses his skin. peaking up from under long lashes, light flooding his gaze. raising a hand to block the overwhelming light from his eyes, harley notices a small white feather. he wondered if angels had made home in their willow tree. looking up to find a white crow perched at the end of the tree 's limb. staring down at him with huge red eyes, so bright he could have sworn he saw the other side in them.
the young boy had remained ap...
... middle of paper ...
...ght new hope in his mother 's life. he wasn 't sentimental or superstitious, but he was for his mother. he smiled when she talked about witch practices and her life as a former coven witch. a time before his father. he smiled when she told him stories of old legends of their kind that seemed more like fairy tales. he even smiled when she went on about her dreams for his future. so when her voice died he stopped smiling.
his mother 's suicide shocked them all. they all felt the burden of her death, but harley had to carry the weight except another tie in his life had been cut and the threads holding him together were slowly coming undone. he couldn 't stand staying in the same coven that had shared bonds with his mother. in a time when most people needed the strength of their coven he wanted to be left alone. so he strayed from coven life... and he wouldn 't look back
“Don’t judge a book by its cover.” This is a phrase that has been uttered numerous times to children by their parents. This aphorism has been used to not only apply to books but also people. In The Black Walnut Tree by Mary Oliver, the speaker faces a conflict between the literal and figurative meaning of a tree in her yard. In the beginning of the poem, the mother and daughter “debate” selling the tree to “pay off their mortgage.” But with a shift from literal language to figurative language comes a symbolic representation of the tree, one that represents family heritage and their ancestors’ hard work.
The timeline carries on chronologically, the intense imagery exaggerated to allow the poem to mimic childlike mannerisms. This, subjectively, lets the reader experience the adventure through the young speaker’s eyes. The personification of “sunset”, (5) “shutters”, (8) “shadows”, (19) and “lamplights” (10) makes the world appear alive and allows nothing to be a passing detail, very akin to a child’s imagination. The sunset, alive as it may seem, ordinarily depicts a euphemism for death, similar to the image of the “shutters closing like the eyelids”
Kim Addonizio’s “First Poem for You” portrays a speaker who contemplates the state of their romantic relationship though reflections of their partner’s tattoos. Addressing their partner, the speaker ambivalence towards the merits of the relationship, the speaker unhappily remains with their partner. Through the usage of contrasting visual and kinesthetic imagery, the speaker revels the reasons of their inability to embrace the relationship and showcases the extent of their paralysis. Exploring this theme, the poem discusses how inner conflicts can be powerful paralyzers.
Li-Young Lee’s poem, A Story, explores a complex relationship between a father and his five year old son. Although the poem’s purpose is to elaborate on the complexity of the relationship and the father’s fear of disappointing his son, the main conflict that the father is faced with is not uncommon among parents. Lee is able to successfully portray the father’s paranoia and son’s innocence through the use of alternating point of view, stanza structure, and Biblical symbolism.
From the time he decides to go to the woods at night, this peaceful panorama presented in his hometown changes. Evil images like "devil, lonely thick boughs, "1 add an obscure and negative side to the story.
The main theme of Snowbound is that no-matter what happens, family will be there to help and comfort. This theme is demonstrated widely throughout the poem and even more so in the last stanza of this excerpt. Another, less prominent, theme of Snowbound is the meaning and involvement of God in the lives of people.
The death camp was a terrible place where people where killed. Hitler is who created the death camp for Jews. The death camp was used for extermination on Jews. This occurred on 1939 – 1945. The death camps were in the country of Europe. Hitler did all this because he didn’t like Jews and the religions. The book Night is a autobiography written by Elie Wiesel. The poem called First they came for the communist written by Martin Neimoller is a autobiography.
...tmosphere and the solitude of a funeral where instead of alter boy’s candles, ‘there will be glimmering tears of good byes.’
The time period this work takes place in is a very gloomy and frightening time. He wakes up in a dark place by himself and in fear, which makes things worse. A common theme we can relate this dark place to is when we fall off of the path of God. Since God represents all things good, the dark is the exact opposite. Since everything is not so clear in the wood he his describing, the path back to God is even more difficult to attain.
Deep in the valley the Wood Sprites and the Fairies flocked together, trembling in their masses; when all were gathered they embraced each other in a fond farewell, then they began to sing such a melancholy song, dancing and swaying in a hypnotic rhythm; the song carried out across the wood, birds in the trees stopped to listen, their heads on one side, their eyes shining with sorrow and the animals crept from their dens and burrows to watch. The air in the wood was thick with sadness, a fox gave a low mewl, it's ears flattening against it's slender head, a magnificent stag threw back it's head and let out a long roar that rose and mingled with the notes of the song.
As the narrator stays for the night he becomes curious about this shepherd, who lives all alone in this stone house, and decides to stay for a while longer. The shepherd, after being widowed, had decided to restore the ruined landscape of the isolated and largely abandoned valley by single-handedly cultivating a forest, tree by tree. The shepherd, Elzéard Bouffier, makes holes in the ground and plants acorns that he had collected from far away into those holes.
“The Spring and the Fall” is written by Edna St. Vincent Millay. The poem is about two people, the poet and her significant other that she once had love for. The poem integrates the use of spring and fall to show how the poet stresses her relationship. Of course it starts off briefly by having a happy beginning of love, but the relationship soon took a shift for the worst, and there was foreshadow that there would be an unhappy ending. “I walked the road beside my dear. / The trees were black where the bark was wet” (2-3). After the seasons changed, the poet begins to explain why the relationship was dying, and all of the bad things she endured during the relationship. So, to what extend did the poet’s heart become broken, and did she ever
This morning I wake early from the light that creeps underneath my blinds and my bed next to the window. I wake floating on the streams of light, heated, like white wax spilled across the floor, dripping, soft. In bare feet I walk down the stairs, cold on the wood, and find my father in the kitchen, also awake early. Together, we leave the house, the house that my parents built with windows like walls, windows that show the water on either side of the island. We close the door quietly so as not to wake the sleepers. We walk down the pine-needle path, through the arch of trees, the steep wooden steps to the dock nestled in the sea-weed covered rocks. We sit silently on the bench, watch as the fog evaporates from the clear water. The trees and water are a painting in muted colors, silver and grays and greenish blue, hazy white above the trees.
The meaning of life is a question that has been attempted to be answered using many forms of the written word. Poetry is one such form that is especially effective in tackling this enigmatic subject. Being able to deliver a meaningful message in a matter of a few lines truly exemplifies how the power of poetry can transcend the human imagination. Robert Frost is one poet who keenly uses both figurative and literal language to create a poem that expresses a love of life—however painful it may be at times—while celebrating the communion between man and nature. Upon first reading his poem “Birches,” we may be inclined to think that it is a simple story about a young boy swinging from the branches of birch trees; but this
A Poison Tree by William Blake is metaphorically describing the idea of life and the