Yesterday was the recruiting event for my school, at which I ran a creative writing workshop for the accepted students. While none to choose to use the future is a reluctant curveball, the poems they came up with were strong. I’ve invited them to send them to me so I can set something up for them in September when they actually begin. I hope they do. When one of the students, an eighth grader mind you, ended her poem based on the metaphor death is an unruly drum with “thump, thump dead,” there was an audible gasp in the room. Truly inspiring.
As for me, I did as I promised and wrote my poem on the original metaphor: the future is a reluctant curveball. Here is the result.
Batter Up
Life happens at the speed of a fastball,
Moving inexorabley onward in the flash of an eye, but
The future is a reluctant curveball
Hurtling at us at 70 miles per hour-
Slow enough to see, maybe, but
Fast enough to miss when
It moves away from our expected trajectory.
Half of those turns bounce in the dirt
Half miss the zone altogether
Half arrive as a hitter’s pitch
Swing away at the best,
Ignore the rest,
Adjusting to the vageries of time
So that we don’t
Strike out.
CRCreateADay 