High School Poetry

I was as excited as a child at Christmas when I found a folder with poems I had written in a high school creative writing class.  Not that the poems were any good, mind you.  I was just excited to have them and to relive the joy and pain that went into writing them.

I was sent to the guidance counselor's office twice during my junior year, both times by my creative writing teacher.  I wasn't a miscreant, I promise.  My guilt lay in being an over-zealous student.  I loved my creative writing class, even though I did not love the teacher.  It seemed she did her best to take the fun out of writing; but nonetheless, I took each assignment seriously.  And for this, I was sent to see the counselor.

I only have one of the two assignments, but after re-reading the poem that sent me there the first time, I really don't see how she came up with the idea that I might be suicidal!  Please read and let me know if you do...


The old man sits quietly in the park,
He stays all day, from morning to dark.
He sits in the park as the children go by.
He'll stay in the park 'til the day he dies.

He has no family, no one to care.
No friends with stories, they want to share.
He sits in the park, he's all alone,
He sits so quietly as if he were stone.

Once he was happy, so happy he cried.
First his wife, then his children all died.
Now he's so lonely, so lonely he cries,
He'll stay in the park 'til the day he dies.

Thirty plus years removed from the writing of this poem, I can honestly say I see a feeble old man sitting on a park bench and nothing more.  I can't read between the lines and find myself concerned about a suicidal teen.  Can you?

As I've thought about this incident, I wondered about something else.  How often have we read scripture and felt compelled to find some hidden meaning?  Desperate to find a cryptic truth?   I am not denying that the Bible is full of imagery, it certainly is.  What I am suggesting is that there are verses that should be taken at face value.  They are what they say they are.  Why do we take scripture out of context and twist it to fit the situation at hand?  Because it's easy.  It is easier to take one or two verses out of context to support our cause, than it is to study the context within which the scripture was written and look further if it doesn't apply.

Perhaps my creative writing teacher had just attended a seminar on identifying suicidal teens -  look closely at the joyful ones - I don't know.  For whatever reason, she took a poem written to fulfill an assignment, an assignment she gave to the entire class, and saw something that wasn't there.

It was easy to send me to the counselor's office.  She didn't have to ask any difficult or embarrassing questions of me.  If she had studied the poem and the assignment from which it came, she would have realized I wasn't suicidal.  I was simply writing a poem.  It is what it is.  Nothing more, nothing less.

I hope that as I read the scripture, searching for the text I need for my next presentation, lesson or book, I will consider the context.  Please do the same.

Blessings to you and yours,
 Debra Fuhrman
Bluebird Ministries