Published

At the end of the school year the High School published a book of poems and pictures. Two of Emil Michael's poems were chosen. Here they are. The first one is a sonnet.

Forest

Tamarack pines in a forest of snow

Silence eternal, a winter so long

Snowflakes fall lazily, drifting so low

This forest never hears any bird's song

Slowly a leopard slips around a tree

Forest spirit, personified in thee.

Silent and beautiful, dangerous still

Stalking its prey, preparing for a kill.

Silence shatters, human steps scare the prey

Cheated, angry, the leopard slinks away.

Loud and disruptive, the humans pass through

Tarnishing the sweet, soft, unblemished snow.

Time passes, snow leopard spirit gone hence,

Snow and tamarack pines rules the silence.

Save Your Fork; There's More

Can you imagine

Dying

And never knowing more?

To fall into the void, the dark

And simply cease to exist

To feel it closing about you

And just stop being.....aware?

What do you have to look forward to, then?

18 short years of freedom

Work for every day of fifty long years

Waste away your twilight days

Waiting for a final rest....

No.

There is something more. The is

More to this life than the coldness of science

The dismissal of gods, of continuing.

There is a scale that must be weighted

For our life, and what we did.

After this life, a chance to reforge yourself

To start anew in another place

To remember each time our previous lives

And go back, proclaiming,

"This time I'll do better."

And through this process, maybe eventually become gods ourselves...

If you don't agree, think of it this way -

You will go where you want to after you die.

The Christians will go to their god

And the Muslims to theirs, and the Mormons to theirs

The atheist to the void, and the reincarnationist to wherever the heck they're going

And I will continue on, beyond this life

And should we meet then

In that place without a name

And should we meet again...

I'll tell you then what I tell you now

Best of luck to you

And wherever you're going

I hope you do better.