Below is a poem my 16-year-old wrote as an assignment – to imitate the rhythm and rhyme scheme of Ode to the West Wind, by Percy Bysshe Shelley. You can tell it was written in the depths of winter, but the hope at the end makes it appropriate for this season. Enjoy!
Winter
By Teresa Williams
O how viciously you tighten your grasp.
You steal from me my senses and my life.
The dull and edgeless ache my heart does clasp.
Black and gray and brown and soaked with strife;
Sickness and doom impede upon my soul.
Earth’s bitter tears hang thick and cut like a knife.
As I wander through a much-loved knoll,
My heart is straining for color and for rays,
For any sign this bitterness fails control.
My mind is frayed, my mood reflects the grays
And, like a ghost of who I used to be,
I float and flit within the colorless haze
Until…
Out of my coma with birdsong I wake to see
On flitting wings and pastel-colored hues
My joy, my life, my living return to me.