James Monroe High School - Monrovian Yearbook (Bronx, NY)

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KA1, .. u4J'N-X Q D -A WAPJDEREQOS THE SKIES - Qcnior C161-S5+.EfQ71.fC'CI2

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ROM the beginning there was the sky. One held tight to a Big Person's hand and stared through lowered rainbow tinted lashes. P The sky was very strange. One wanted to giggle but grew, quite suddenly, solemn. On sunny afternoons one saw a round golden flower and a great many white butterflies playing around it. Rainy afternoons were different-not so niee. Those were days when Mrs. God cleaned house fin a gray wrapperj and dusted all the fluffy butterflies and the golden flowers. Sometimes one saw a few belated butterfly clouds rushing home and wished, wistfully, that they would stay. Besides the sky there were other happy things-flowers and birds and trees. People were unimportantg one disposed of them with drawings like these. They were always the samefso one came to love the ehanging sky. Starry nightfskies were like Mother going to a ball-all perfumed and silvery and gleaming. One knew a poem to the stars: O, star, cradled on the sky's wide breast, Shine on the tired earth at rest. . So elose they were one heard them singing silver lullabies'-and slept. One grew older, became Richard a boy. He knew, then, the thrill of flashf ing whitefbodied into sunfwarmed water, of crawling out and lying tinglyf nerved under broad hot rays! It was good to talk endlessly of life under the clean, sunfswept skyg to fall silent and watch, through whirling leaves and branches, a bee drawing life from a flower, crickets fiddling in the grass, a 3 reen worm swaying on a silver grassfblade, a bird in swinging flight in a Senior Class-Seiwntcen

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THE SENIOR BOOK , Uhr Gthilh Grew CEIDP1' QCOM-5 sky so close its glory blinded! His soul sang. The music sprang to his lips, yet he knew no words-was dumb. With passing days, he saw the dark tentacles of the smoky city reach further aiieldg and when he sought to guard his loves he found his friends mutilating these last, lovely thingsfsaw a golden minnow gasping on the grass and a wounded bird in swift, aching fall., And so, learning of men, he gave them up-and the earth. But the sky remaidetd Riclwrd's as as at as ak as Richard was a young man on the verge of life. A man-a poet and' a walker of skies . . . seeking with words to resist the heavy odor of the heaving earth. Richard walked in still wonder. He cried, The morn is my Mother, the sun is my Mistress. p I am a wanderer of the skies! Thru a silver rain of stars I go- Heeding lest I crush a star unaware And it fall sighing to earth. Richard walked in wonder-and Life waited at the turn of the path. is as :af as ac af He married and they whispered, 'LNow he'll settle down. Richard laughed. He bragged, L'It has become necessary to chain my body in the city, to become again of earth and moon. But listen-my spirit is ever free-I can always touch the stars. After a while he forgotg nor did he remember when his wife cleaned out his desk and got rid of his scribblings. It was so very easy t0 forget other things when one moved in a world such as this-steel amid smoke and rearing buildings gutted with struggling men. All unknowingly, one became a self' important atom in the parade of progress. Unknowingly, Richard stepped into the groove that had lain waiting from the beginning. Richard, coming home long after the dusk of the day, watched with tired eyes a falling star, thinking idly, If I could catch it, my wife would have a diamond star to wear at her breast. But the sky is too far away- and how distant and barren it is. l Richard, coming home and lying down beside his wife, closed his eyes and saw a star falling. ' Senior Class-Nineteen