Alle Benchoff

Shore Country Day School

Grade 8

Night

Sonnet

Unlucky cat black fills the silent sky

The color of absolute emptiness

Freezing cold air lets out a subtle cry

From the house comes one light, a friendliness

One world goes to sleep, another one wakes

Owl flies, 'coon steals, bat blends with silent sky

And the moon lives alone and his heart breaks

He has no escape he can't even die

He watches the light, the one from the house

And this one light is the last one awake

The light is me, awake late like a mouse

These hours, like thin glass, I'm about to break

The night is empty, yet the night is full.

Fight through the night and you will see the light

Gareth Buhl

Waring School

Grade 12

Looking in at an Old Friend’s Wake

I fumble at my tie knot

Wavering between

Respectful and breathless.

Aware that I know no one here

Except the widow

And the boys,

I wait quietly in line

And bite my fingernails.

In the corpse-room (what is it called?)

Relatives stand as islands,

I tread water,

Visitor, voyeur,

Between them

Alone.

Do they feel throttled also

By charcoal tiles

Waves of slate curtains

And grey landscapes?

I heard drowning is peaceful—

This is not.

I wish her clumsy wishes,

Wait watery and useless

Choked at the closed casket, uncertain.

There’s a bible and knee-rests

But I’m not a catholic.  

I don’t pray.

A look over my shoulder: countless

In line await approach.

So I pass on.

Neither of the boys cry,

In their eyes is not him but

Bloated slack face and

Slate hands, briny

Battered washed up blue

Bruised and brackish.

Light and distant,

I can silently slip into sun

And air.

I do.

(Take a story with me,

Leave a body behind)

Inside they still tread water.