The Idea of Love and Conflict

Year 10 are currently studying Poetry through the idea of Love and Conflict. Mr Fitisemanu set a challenge to his class to write a Love Poem and last Friday (Valentine’s Day), the boys shared their work. There were a range of topics that offered interesting, humorous and sincere depictions of Love. It was so wonderful to see the respect and encouragement each student demonstrated as they shared their poetry, one of the most personal forms of writing in which one can engage.

The Beauty of the Depths by Finn Herald, Year 10

I wrote the poem below in response to a homework task where we had to write a love poem for Valentine’s Day. I decided that I did not know what exactly I loved, so I just started writing with the idea of love in my head until I felt satisfied that what I was trying to achieve had been done. My poem discusses the beauties that hide in travesty and the travesty that is a sad mind. I propose that love is only found by a loving soul and that there is love in all.

The Beauty of the Depths

Seas and skies sway together,

Bleeding blues and greens to a waking eye.

Restless days creep from restless minds,

Swallowing possibilities till veins run dry.

The winds of freedom snap their tether.

Yet, still high fly those mighty winds,

Till what was one, becomes another.

Another life, another view upon this accursed world,

Whose beauty knows no brother.

Suffocating, spluttering, reaper of the depths,

Why too, do you give me sustenance of mind and body?

Waves to meld with, and bony beasts to feast on.

Till every other store sells endless ingestion,

And all afternoons fill my holes with water,

As I leave my body, in the ocean’s care, I drift.

Yet it is not you, the seas,  who provides for me,

But me who asks why.

A loving heart finds love in all,

The caring embrace of fish blood and the pier,

Prismatic streaks run oil-soaked gull wings,

Broken things fuse with a water tree,

Creating a beautiful new whole.

The rippling sunset on the sea,

Triumphed by the beauty of the soul.

All the hidden symphonies of the world

Begin to envelop your senses,

A strange interpretation blows in the salty breeze,

A new perspective reveals in ripple’s reflection.

Peace and chaos spawns existence,

Never different, never the same,

Its omnipotence yields control to us,

Beautifully ugly, justly unfair,

It and us,

is Everything.

If you love, you are loving it.

When you die, it absorbs you.

It’s your perception, you control every bit.

It is the love of the view.