October 19 in class creative writing

We read Mending Wall by Robert Frost in depth in class. After discussing the poem, each student picked 2 words from the poem they loved, then wrote a coherent story as a group - each one adding a sentence that fit the style and content proposed by the first writer. The order of the sentences is:

1. Julian

2. Daniella

3. Helen

4. Teresa

5. Johnson

6. Rachel

   
   

*****

Mending Wall

by Robert Frost

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,

That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,

And spills the upper boulders in the sun;

And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.

The work of hunters is another thing:

I have come after them and made repair

Where they have left not one stone on a stone,

But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,

To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,

No one has seen them made or heard them made,

But at spring mending-time we find them there.

I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;

And on a day we meet to walk the line

And set the wall between us once again.

We keep the wall between us as we go.

To each the boulders that have fallen to each.

And some are loaves and some so nearly balls

We have to use a spell to make them balance:

‘Stay where you are until our backs are turned!’

We wear our fingers rough with handling them.

Oh, just another kind of out-door game,

One on a side. It comes to little more:

There where it is we do not need the wall:

He is all pine and I am apple orchard.

My apple trees will never get across

And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.

He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’

Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder

If I could put a notion in his head:

‘Why do they make good neighbors? Isn’t it

Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.

Before I built a wall I’d ask to know

What I was walling in or walling out,

And to whom I was like to give offense.

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,

That wants it down.’ I could say ‘Elves’ to him,

But it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather

He said it for himself. I see him there

Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top

In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.

He moves in darkness as it seems to me,

Not of woods only and the shade of trees.

He will not go behind his father’s saying,

And he likes having thought of it so well

He says again, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’

*****

Favorite words from the poem and story

loaves

spill

mending-time

gaps

wall

mischief

offense

armed

savage

notion

shade

*****

The Story

Looking at the fragmented gaps of the wall I see noticeable gray shadows visible through it. The mischievous wind blows through the gaps. Inside the walls I sit with a wobbly table careful that the glasses of milk don’t spill over the furniture. I remembered my grandpa’s notion of chasing away the shadows. He followed the shadows all the way to the dark forest armed with a sense of doom. I can still dream of him sometimes, savage and insane from the illusions of the shadows -- Will I end up the same as him?