Red Wheelbarrow, a writting class essay

The rain was letting up, that he was thankful of. It had been raining last night when he had fallen asleep, it was raining as he woke up, and it had continued to rain until midday when the rat-tat-tat of drops on the window became a soft pat-pat-pat and the cool glass his face rested against warmed slightly with the sun. The clouds were passing. At least the garden was well watered.

The animals, too, recognized the change. The dog pawed the door and the cat settled down in his place beside the window to enjoy the new sun born from the dark clouds. Struggling, his boots were put on and the door was open and both man and his best friend burst into the yard and the dew and the musty air.

The dog ran off and the yard transformed in his mind. The area was a muddy trench now, the battle ground of a war to end all wards. The mud squelched under his boots as he patrolled. His men were dead. The enemy had won. Or so they thought.

As long as he survived, there was hope. A mosquito buzzed at his ear. Quickly, into the bush! Stay low, enemy aircrafts are scanning the area. The summer day turned into the darkest night. There were flashlights in the distance, people speaking foreign tongues. Two came close, their lights grazing the leaves above his head. Eyes closed, he listened carefully. “Sie Zerbrochen unter Folter. Es gibt eine links.”(Hervey, and Loughride) He checked his book for translation. They knew he was there. There was no hope.

But then…what’s that? That, across the mud and filth; an aircraft carrier half-sunk in the mud. It was one of theirs, the kind he’d flown in the first war when he was just a young man. He could remember it , but not so clearly. It seems all his memories were shot up with bullet holes and burnt along the edges like the photos his wife sent.


He had to fly the airplane alone his first time up. Other pilots have several hours of dual time in the air, with an experienced, qualified pilot in the aircraft. So for a student fighter pilot who would not get his wings for more than three more weeks, taking up this brand new kind of airplane was a challenge. (Robin)

It had toughened him, made his skin thick as leather. That’s how he’d survived this time when all the young and green were picked off so quick. The lights receded and he picked his way out of the brush slowly so as not to attract attention. It was a good twenty minutes away, but he could make it. He’d made it this far.

The boots stuck in the mud and every step was like a fight, like the hands of the men he had shot were holding him tight until he was found They had no voice to call out, but they slowed his pace. Twenty minutes could easily become thirty, forty. Maybe more. He was lucky though. With the land and weather what it was, the wet and the cold, his socks were soaked through. Trench foot was the least of his worries, but the thought was there. If he didn’t make it, he was dead anyways. But if he did there would be pretty Red Cross nurses like his wife having to saw his leg off at the knee. His pack was long gone so there was no chance to solve the problem. It was best just to push on.

More mosquito fighter planes and from afar, barking. They had brought the dogs. There wasn’t much time left. He pictured big German Shepherds with glossy black fur, teeth bared. They’d go for the throat. Maybe the rain and the scent of the dead would hold them off for a while. He was almost there. The trenches were so flooded but going above ground to the bushes and the flatter ground was too dangerous. The barking came closer, sharp like a knife through his chest. It was so close, his red beauty, and with every step she grew larger and larger until he could almost feel her cool steel under his palms, rain dripping from her propeller. He was so close, he was so close..

Mother’s calling from inside the house. His feet dry inside rain boots, the yard transforms again. The little dog chases clucking chickens. Rain drips off the rusted lip of the red wheel barrow. A letter from his father came in the mail. Maybe he’ll be flying home soon.

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
Chickens (Williams)

Wild Nights, a writing class essay

Wild Nights--Wild Nights!
Were I with thee
Wild Nights should be
Our luxury!
(Dickinson)

“Shh, shh.” She hushed and the group giggled, anxious and giddy. She dug through her tote and pulled out a thermos with the name of her mother’s work printed along the side in the bold, cold letters pharmaceutical companies use in print ads in magazines for housewives. “Angelina’s having her seventh baby! Look how depressed you are!” The thermos is passed around our awkward circle. We’d crowded in the back of her mother’s van, the van she’d borrowed to get to my house. The taste and smell of cheap liquor was familiar by now. We were too young and felt too old and out the wide back window I looked out at the suburban neighborhood, quiet at this time of the night, and I wondered how many depressed housewives were washing the dinner dishes and letting tears fall onto their Lane Bryant blouses. How many told their husbands they weren’t in the mood and hid in the bathroom thumbing through the Newport News catalog? How long do I have until the life goes out of me? The radio hummed on in the background, almost like static, “What a drag it is getting old. Life’s just much too hard today.” (Rolling Stones, “Mother’s Little Helper”)

When the van had become too claustrophobic we burst out the doors like butterflies from a cocoon into the warm summer night and quietly, so quietly, we drunkenly fiddled with the gate until the latch gave way and across the yard we ran as far as we could. Out to behind the shed where man had dug a hole, a trench about ten feet wide and fifteen down. There was a tiny island in the middle with a tree standing up against the moonlight. A shadow of defiance. We stood on the edge and looked down at the dirt and gravel until someone was calling my name and I realized they’d all sat against the shed and someone was holding out a joint. This was the way our nights usually went. It didn’t matter the people, the only one I ever knew was her, but the situation was always the same. I’d get a call or a text and we’d meet and drink and smoke and they would talk about all the things you talk about when you’re drunk and high. It’s only teenage wasteland. (The Who, “Baba O’Riley”) But the best part of these nights was when I would fall back into the grass and look at the stars and feel numb and happy and enjoy the world spinning beneath me. My organic spaceship.

I had the joint and someone was calling me Kurt Cobain and the group laughed at my flannel and my cropped hair and the jeans I hadn’t washed all summer. They laughed at my silence and she told them to shut up, if I had anything worth saying I’d say it and it wouldn’t be their marijuana talk about Jesus and Batman and the vastness of vast-itude and they shut up pretty quickly until the munchies set in and off they went to the Wilson Farms down the street for whatever they could afford and beyond that whatever they could fit in their purses.

“They’re dumb, they’re so dumb,” she said, and I felt the ground beneath me shift as she crouched at my side. “I don’t know why I bother with them. It’s just…it is, you know?” And I guess I must have known because I nodded. She said that a lot at times like these. You know? You know? I guess I must have known a lot more than I realized I did because I never asked her to explain and she never asked me to contribute. Her job was to talk and mine was to listen and together we were supposed to be young and alive.

There was the sound of a lighter and she sucked in nicotine and tar. “I’ve always wanted to climb that tree. Let’s do it.” She stood and nudged my side with a bare foot until I opened my eyes and did as she asked. Together, her without shoes and me in old sneakers, we slid and scuffed down and across and up the dirt and by the end I had to help pull her up the other side and my jeans had a rip in the knee from falling and her feet were cut from bits of glass I hadn’t known were there. We stood at the bottom of that tree and stared up into it’s branches but I was too far gone to climb and her feet were too worn to do anything so we laid in the shadows and looked at the star and I listened to her heartbeat with my head on her breast as she sang songs from yesteryear.

“I can't get no satisfaction,
I can't get no girly action.
'Cause I try and I try and I try and I try.
I can't get no, I can't get no.”
(Rolling Stones, “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction“)

Her voice went out to the neighbors and the night and as she belted the lyrics I put my hand over her mouth and laughed and she kissed my palm and I sighed and the earth spun beneath us, hurtling us through space, and together we felt too young and too old and too small and too big and too many things that they don’t have words for. The important thing is, we felt. And that night, under the moon and the stars and huddled in the shadow of defiance, I promised myself I would always feel and god damn the supermarket magazines and the pharmaceuticals and the husbands and dishes. I was alive, and that was the way I wanted to keep it.

The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to
live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same
time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn,
burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders
across the stars and in the middle you see the blue center light pop
and everybody goes “Awww!” (Kerouac)