Kayaks - Jenna Pelosi

Henri Cole
Kayaks

I chose this poem because in the beginning of the poem, the speaker is drawing such a serene, calm, and familiar image in my head. This image helps me to find myself in the poem. “…Two kayaks float across mild, clear water; A red sun stains the lake like colored class” (Cole, pg. 425). However, as I read on in the poem not only does the mood change, but I also find myself more as the speaker reads on with his words. The speakers use of lyrics offers a sense of wisdom among his sentences. He states, “Everything I am feels distant or blank as the opulent rays pass through me…” (Cole, pg. 425). I often feel lost within myself, that I have a million things racing in my head, yet I feel blank and out of touch. As I felt this way throughout my life, I would walk to a place in my neighborhood, where it was quiet and secluded and I would just gaze up in the sky, with nothing my silence encompassing me. (That is an example of my lyric life.) I am able to find myself better when I am alone and the only sounds around me are ones from nature. This poem helps paint that picture for me; it brings me back. More times than not, I question who I am inside, because of a heartbreak from someone who I identified myself with. “I have been deceived, he is not what he seemed- though the failure is not in the other, but in me because I am tired, hurt or bitter” (Cole , pg. 425). Through that line the speaker shows wisdom as well as truth behind his words.