by Charmaine Küllenberg
The wind rises
Like a wave upon the sea
Where the weeds are growing free
There deep, deep in the forest night
Some are born to sweet delight
_
There we wander, there we weep
As the crows fall asleep
Hear the forest talking, insects and birds
An idiot prayer of empty words
With no alarms and no surprises
_
I looked up to the sky above
To you, who was dearly loved
Working notes on Charmaine’s poem:
For the Wordsworth rewriting poem, I chose the line “Beside the lake, beneath the trees” because I
had the idea of describing a new scene based on it. So when I was collecting lines, I picked the ones
that I thought would fit the scene I had in mind. I had a lot of fun working on the poem, but it was
also quite challenging. What made it difficult for me was that I found lines that rhymed at the end
(the first pair I found was ‘night’, ‘delight’) and decided that I wanted the whole poem to rhyme. I
found most lines from songs I’ve been listening to at the time and other things I’ve read. The line
“Some are born to sweet delight” is taken from William Blake’s ‘Auguries of Innocence’ because I
just like that poem and wanted to use a line for this. Personally, the poem invokes a feeling of
solitude and melancholy, but also calmness. The first two stanzas build a sort of frame as I put the
rhyming lines at the beginning of the first stanza and the end of the second one (‘rises’, ‘surprises’).
I’m not quite sure why I wanted to frame it like that; it just felt right to me.