Throwback Thursday: Senior Poetry Contest, Part 2

Happy Throwback Thursday, readers!

For those of you who missed last week’s installment, we are recounting the three poems that I read during the Senior Poetry Contest during my final year of high school. I went on to win the contest… most likely because I was perhaps the only person taking the class because I was a legitimate geek, rather than just for an easy A.

Here is poem # 2:

I’m sorry – was I daydreaming?
I do that quite a bit.
Oh, what about? Like I would tell!
Well… this much I’ll admit.

There was a tree. And in its shade,
We lounged like ladybugs.
And our time was punctuated
By a dozen lengthy hugs.

We were by a lake, I think.
(I hadn’t gotten that far yet)
And we were reading Dorothy Parker
…Or Walt Whitman, I forget.

A picnic basket held our things,
Among them ham and cheese.
And we wandered over to our feast
While dusting grassy knees.

NO WAIT! We watched a baseball game.
And I asked, “Who’s on first?”
And you said something witty
And completely unrehearsed.

Then Mark Loretta got a run,
And then we got four more.
The game was legendary!
But… we didn’t know the score.

OR better yet, we walked the beach
With salty, windbown hair.
And we couldn’t look directly
At the water for the glare.

So we settled underneath the dock,
And watched the tide roll out.
We sat there for awhile, and well,
Then we talked about…

Oh – goodness gracious, I don’t know!
It’s all about the same.
I guess that’s just what I deserve
For playing the daydream game.

It’s a nasty cycle,
This imaginary life.
‘Cause you wake up – to the real world.
To death, and pain, and strife.

But I guess it’s better that way.
You know, when all is said and done.
What’s that saying? “Falls no shadow,
Where there shines no sun?”

Well, I’m back inside reality…
And my imagination’s shrinking.
But could you do me a favor?
Never ask me what I’m thinking!