JAMIE Poem – Poetry Course (300 Level Course)
When Jamie was sixteen
Suddenly he was deaf. There were no songs,
No voices any more.
He walked about stunned by the terrible silence.
Kicking a stick, rapping his knuckles on doors,
He felt a spell of silence all about him,
So loud it made a ringing in his ear.
People moved mouths without a second escaping:
He shuddered at the straining of their throats.
And suddenly he watched then with suspicion.
Wondering if they were talking of his faults,
Were pitying him or seeing him with score.
He dived into their eyes and dragged up sneers,
And sauntering the streets imagined laughter behind him.
Working at odd jobs, ploughing, picking potatoes,
Chopping trees in the lumber woods in winter,
He became accustomed to an aimless and lonely labor.
He was solitary and unloqualious as a stone.
And silence grew over him like moss on an old stump.
But sometimes, going to town,
He was sore with the hunger for company among the people
And, getting drunk, would snout at them for friendship,
Laughing aloud in the streets.
He returned to the woods,
And dreaming at night of a shining cowboy heaven
Where guys crashed through his deafness, awoke morose,
And chopped the necks of pine trees in his anger.
Jamie is my favorite poem because it really makes me think about what we take for granted. Sight, smell and hearing we all think it is a given but some people get it taken away from them or do not receive it when their born. I don’t know what I would do with out one of my five senses. It must have been very hard for Jamie to adjust to this.