Pumpkins and Poetry

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Tonight, I participated in a program at my alma mater called "A Night to Remember." Some 20 participants recited poetry, prose, and parts of plays that had made an impact on their lives at one point or another. Ages ranged between 6 or 7 and nearly 80! I was pleasantly surprised with the evening, as I hadn't expected much, to be honest. More to the point, I didn't really know what to expect, only that I was going to give the opening lines of a play I was in some 30 years ago. Beyond that, I didn't know.

At least 8 of the participants were high school students delivering selections ranging from the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet to The Hollow Men by T.S. Eliot. I was quite impressed with their renditions. Two moved me quite deeply. One young man gave an outstanding recitation of Poe's The Raven and his father performed Frost's The Road Not Taken. Performance obviously runs in that family!

The man who organized the evening also arranged the stage decorations, somehow "growing" the college letters "AUC" into one of the pumpkins. He said he carved them into the pumpkin several weeks ago and it grew a callous in the shape of the letters. I thought that was quite cool. I've never heard of, never mind seen, such a thing before.

The program was exactly 90 minutes, and the audience left wanting more, which is the way it should be. It was indeed a night to remember.