The Castle
Tales, Poems and Legends

The school year is nearing its conclusion. Seniors pen their wills, last written words to their friends and then pen checks to pay for tickets to the banquet. AP students buckle down for the last legs of their journey, wary eyes fixed on the horizon where the final battle looms. Many are looking beyond it to graduation and to the new adventures of a college. Everything is drawing to a close, but by no means any of it slowing down. Students rush to complete their last acts of the year, auditioning for talent show, practicing for poetry slam, working up stylish ways to ask fair maidens to the banquet.

As the shining finale draws nigh, the Castle plays host to its penultimate poet, the dazzling Laura Judd. In masterful rhyme Laura gracefully delivers an important point, and though the words are now a few years old the message is quite relevant even now…especially now, as all of us are caught up in the whirlwind of a thousand last-minute responsibilities. Many of us could learn to slow down a bit and end this year on the right note.

Fearless
By Laura Judd

The bleak world quickly rushes by
Singing its own lullaby--
Destruction hurtles closer, closer,
And we run toward it evermore.
But still birds dance and mermaids sing
And heroes search for better things
And people watch the butterflies
In the mind of a little boy,
Who, ignorant of evil’s hold
On everyone in his dark world,
Content, he watches stars fly by
In the refuge of his own mind’s eye.
He sometimes speaks when no one’s there
And people often turn and stare
At this small boy--“So strange,” they say,
“So peculiar.”--He’s not like them.
But he is fearless, unafraid;
There’s nothing inside him that he can’t face
And wouldn’t it be better if
Everybody thought like him?
If people simply didn’t fear
The space that lies between their ears
And truly thought, for once asked why,
Did not accept society’s lies,
What would it be like? I ask
So the next time you feel like you’re dancing too fast,
Slow down, and say hi to a sweet little boy,
See where he takes you, let go,
And hold on tight.