Finis Origine Pendet
Musings in Nature P O E T RY B Y T WO L A M O N T YO U N G E R P O E T S Editor’s Note:The following poems were written by two of the four students honored last year with the Lamont Younger Poets Prize. The award is bestowed annually on student poets in their prep or lower year and was established to honor the late Emeritus Instructor of English Rex McGuinn
and his commitment to encouraging and helping young poets with their craft. McGuinn offered much of that guidance and inspiration from his classroom in Phillips Hall, a building now renewed and equipped to continue as the creative nexus for student poets and writers alike.
Bella By Sarah Chisholm ’14
104
The Exeter Bulletin
W INTER 2013
FRED CARLSON (2)
There’s something ethereal in the way she moves fawn-like through our garden. Her feet step lightly, carefully threading their way between clumps of over-zealous dandelions and haughty Queen Anne’s lace. She croons her lullaby full of made up words and whispers and quiet voices that nobody understands. Her fingers brush the flowers as she passes Storm and they dance behind her, By Grace Yin ’15 the poppies tossing their orange heads to her song. She hums to the cat that sleeps under the rose bush and he listens because something happens when she looks at him. Through the shroud of mist, He lets her pull him into her lap and as she rocks him he feels I see a sea of grey, the green of her eyes on his black fur. And I wondered whether He feels it more than the sharp green moss that tickles his paws and I should put my day makes him sneeze. He feels it like sunlight on a murky pond sifting quietly down through Away for another time, the blanket of But I quickly let it pass duckweed, glancing off dark fish that flit between the shadows. For I had things to do, He feels it like the silk that clings to his whiskers when he walks through a spider’s web. But the lofty sea rolled in, So he lies there, feeling her green slip down to his skin, tingling its way Drenching the trees, through his muscles and into his bones, so deep that it starts a rumble in Swelling the pond, his chest. Flooding the earth, He purrs, his white lashes drifting together over alligator eyes Pulling me into the tide slipping shut and all she can see when she looks into his face are two lazy Of its will slits of gold. She mumbles to him, her sounds painting the garden. She tells him Without a chance to think about the pale yellow butterfly that sits on a lilac branch and shows off its About where I wings. Truly She thinks it is vain, and she tells the cat this, because he is wise and Wanted to go. knows something about humility. She wants to know why he won’t chase the squirrels that scold her when Once the sea calmed down, she walks under the walnut tree. I walked back home— Water soaking into my shoes, She asks if he is too old or too tired or maybe too fat And into the damp air but he doesn’t answer. I breathe. He sits there, feeling, and listens.