Pardon me while I gush a bit. Isabel (a Sophomore no less) won the poetry competition at their high school this week with this beautiful poem:
RAINY NIGHT
pulls the light from the air
and pools it on the street.
Man is tidy and precise in raising up his cities.
Rain freely creates,
giving liberty to man’s rigidity.
She reflects man’s world
more beautifully than he deserves,
transforming those highly regular things
into primordial elegance which he scarcely remembers.
Rain smudges civilization onto her palette,
paints it onto her canvas,
as I stand in helpless awe.
By Isabel Coffey
(Astute readers may note the thematic use of meter in, e.g., the “Man is tidy” line and following, and the incorporation of the title as an implied first line as though the poem is pulling in the world around it. I’m so proud of my budding poet.)
