It was almost two months after I graduated from Oak Ridge High School in Orlando, Florida… which was my fourth different school in as many years. At last, I was on my own, and headed… somewhere? All was very unclear when I wrote this. Having moved out of my mom’s apartment within a week of graduating, and moved in with a fellow ’84 Oak Ridge grad, I was trying to figure out how to become an adult. A couple of years after writing this, ‘The Nil’ was published in the 1986 American Poetry Anthology.
by Roger Darnell
Accepting satisfaction
from such meager tasks,
I feel like a sailor,
The Nil on my mast.
The wind doesn’t move me–
how I wish that it would
to save me deciding–
the way that I should.
This sea was so pretty
when first I set sail.
Now the water seems dirty,
the sky seems so pale.
I guess I should go
and seek shiny new trails…
but that means getting up–
searching the cabin for my sails.
I think I’ll just lie here,
decide where to go
when I wake up tomorrow…
I’ve no plans that I know.
While the sails lie waiting
to stretch and to power,
The Nil gathers confidence
hour by hour.
