Palmtree Contemplations

When I was nine, my father built a large bookcase that stretched from the smooth cement floor to just below a crossbeam supporting our rafters. You could say that the Palm house was held up by all the knowledge stored on that bookcase. Over 500 titles stood proudly on its shelves. If they were particularly large and cumbersome, they knelt pages down and spines up with their fat, attractive corners silently pleading to be grasped and opened. Even then, I saw myself living out my days in some apartment filled with books: leather bound journals featuring my own adventures, novels that should have been read by everyone but were not, volumes of poetry in original languages, and dusty histories with photos of the author on the back of a fraying, half-torn paper cover. Scattered throughout the apartment would be all the books my father had passed onto me from his own exquisite bookcase. Two weeks ago I arrived home to Brasil to help my parents move back to the States permanently. One of m

I sank into a blissful dream Of mysteries and hidden things, Never caring for the consequence The stolen moments soon would bring.   For when the mists receded And dreaming was no more, I woke to find myself in sunlight, Not more rich, but poor.   Then I wept and hid my face, I filled the silence with my cries. For the blissfulness was only dreaming. All I wished had been a lie.  

It was late Thursday night before Spring Break when Sean drove me back from Pour Jons. Thursdays are always long, but this one was particularly draining, and cold besides. I had neglected to turn in a rough draft of the Music History final paper a week earlier, and was attempting to complete it before Spring Break. This involved hours of typing, highlighting, and analyzing alongisde all the regular homework I was doing. After an hour at Pour Jons with some friends, I left to try and rest before the chilly morning arrived. As Sean pulled into the parking lot, we discussed our current papers and future projects. "Honestly, I don't think I want to do all this for the rest of my life," he said. "Do what?" I asked. He had just finished animatedly explaining his idea for a History paper, and I could not see where the conversation was going. "All of this. In the History department the professors push becoming a teacher or getting adoctorate, but I really don

The Swan Did you too see it, drifting, all night, on the black river? Did you see it in the morning, rising into the silvery air - An armful of white blossoms, A perfect commotion of silk and linen as it leaned into the bondage of its wings: a snowbank, a bank of lilies, Biting the air with its black beak? Did you hear it, fluting and whistling A shrill dark music - like the rain pelting the trees - like a waterfall Knifing down the black ledges? And did you see it, finally, just under the clouds - A white cross Streaming across the skyt, its feet Like black leaves, its wings Like the stretching light of the river? And did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained to everything? And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for? And have you changed your life? Explication of Mary Oliver’s poem “The Swan” This poem dramatizes the speaker’s memory of seeing swan and being struck by its beauty. Using metaphors and similes, the author recreat