The Year 13 Leavers’ Assembly marked a poignant beginning, as we listened to Year 13 recount their memories of the Prep and Senior School, as well as the College. The slideshow of photos and the speeches they presented had us alternating between laughter and tears. Riaz and Connie’s poems, crafted for the occasion, epitomized the hallmark of the College: a diverse range of creative talent and potential among them all. Please find their poems below.
Leavers Day Ode – Riaz AH
It is in these final days
that I think most fondly
of our fleeting moment in time.
A dog-eared photo
on marble mantlepieces
cherished like a crutch
into my last light.
That juncture of hope
and fear
So tightly wrapped.
Oh the sweetness of first day jitters!
Oh the sweetness of leavers’ cheers!
Oh the sweetness of results’ tears!
A nostalgic aching in my heart
As I take out those photos
and remember that fleeting moment in time.
First Summer - Connie C
It comes to me below the evergreen
A catalogue of trees;
Our First Summer
we flocked like sparrows behind the head’s garden
Deciphering the columns of our timetable,
Searching for a rhythm in its routine,
laughter shaking eaves of branches
Challenged by the lull our weight.
With locker keys we sounded out
the shapes of our names –
A premature scholars board
inscribed into the bark
Marking the spot where we would later return.
Autumns, we perched
Under the horse chestnut tree
Prising conkers from the fallen leaves
With backs turned to cut-glass september sunlight
Pocketing a hoard of coarse marble,
Where Sports days, we lazed
Across the race-track’s machine-ploughed lines
Our outstretched bodies a reflection of branches
Framing a cloudless sky
A curious obscurity found
in the dapples of fractured light,
Its synergy of branches
threaded through my memory
Like the daisy chains made on that first-last day,
The canopy’s peak
Repeated across the Great Hall’s windowpanes.
A shock of greenery distilled into iridescent light,
All this remembered upon the final drive away
The boughs of the crescent
Tipped into a wave
by the minibus’ forward movement
blossoming leaves trekking the flow of years-
a tapestry of changes united
by the promise of Summer renewed.