A recovered bit of literacy from the past...

So I was cleaning out the garage this weekend and decided that its been 10 years since I have cleaned out my trusty tool box. I found a bunch of random stuff that had accumulated since college and decided to just empty it out and hose the whole thing down. Among the items I found were the following:

-Three worn out tooth brushes
-A green keychain bottle opener from some fraternity, origin unknown.
-Various nuts, bolts and screws from past projects
-Eight pictures of girls from high school in an old wallet insert I used to carry freshman year.
-Twisty straws
-A 2 inch convex lens from an old magnifying glass
-and a dental dam, dried up and useless. This was one of the items Matt and I acquired at the Planned Parenthood workshop during school.

I also found a single folded sheet of standard 8x10.5 inch notebook paper, college ruled. On it was written in pencil (Bic Mechanical, nothing better) a poem. The paper is dated 1-23-02 and also contains 2 remarks written in blue pen. I took a poetry class that year and so I can only assume that is when I wrote it but for what purpose or motivation I cannot recall.

The top right contains "1/10" in blue pen. I guess it was part of a writing assignment or maybe extra credit. The text of the poem is transcribed below. Punctuation and spelling are not corrected.
********
although the weirding winds don't know
it's always to the west they blow
and in their hurried passage carry
souls of dead that wished to tarry
what lands they travel, to we pray
for peace at dreary death's delay

to stray or stay, to fire or light
to burn or warm them through the night
and at the end the winds remain
to circle far and carry again

********
Below the poem follows the second remark, also in blue pen.

This is outstanding.
Also depressing.

What a mystery this poem presents. It was only 6.5 years ago and there is certainly a lot of poetry kicking around on my hard drive though I would hardly call it 'outstanding.' However mysterious I found myself interested to try and remember what I used to think and feel and how different the world seemed back then.

To that end I will be hauling out my notebooks from the days of yore and start slapping my crusty old writing out onto the internet. Some will be good, most of it will be categorically awful or just nonsensical without the context in which it was created.

However it will be interesting to revisit the nascent scribblings as my brain transitioned from adolescent to adult.