To continue our celebration of National Poetry Month, we have another poem for you today. But this isn’t just any poem! Ebonie’s “Stop-It Is Spring” was a finalist in our Spring Poem Contest. We’ll be posting each of the four finalists until Sunday…when we’ll reveal our winner! Ebonie, a sixth grader at Ojeda Middle School, writes in her finalist poem about that special “wonderfulness in the air” that comes from the warmth of spring, the smell of newly blossomed flowers, and the dancing wind. Ebonie’s words remind us to stop and admire the beauty spring brings and to look forward to a new beginning.
Stop—It Is Spring
The tree stops doing what is was
doing—shaking, you might say.
The grass stops dancing in a very
odd way, like a girl I don’t know
as she runs through the grass
and the red roses and the sunflowers—
she stops. Her nose is clear. It is
hot now. She can smell the
wonderfulness in the air because—
yes—
it’s spring.
Ebonie, sixth grade, Ojeda Middle School
Flowers wilt when I walk by, boys flinch and say, “Get away, I don’t want to die!” Girls scream and run away because I am Death or Deathena. I was cursed to become the new grim reaper. I do sometimes execute the people whose time is up or whose hourglass sand has run out. I carry around a scythe and it’s big and heavy. I could chop someone into pieces but I can touch the flesh of a living thing, and it will collapse in death suddenly and without haste. I can always become normal, but because of my well-known stature and occupation of Grim Reaper, no one dares approach me.
unbound 