Follow - A Poem

This poem was composed rather suddenly in my Grade 10 art class. (Visual arts class - my school eventually offered a creative writing class it didn’t count towards my required art credit. I feel cheated.)

You may think this a rather strange poem to have been inspired by an art class. I certainly don’t think it was the message my art teacher wanted me to walk away with. We were working on portraits and I was getting just a little bored of drawing myself over and over again. So I decided to draw an Andalite.

For those of you who are unfamiliar, Andalites are aliens from the Animorphs series. There are blue, have four legs like a horse, a tail with a blade, and a set of eyes on stalks on their heads. I read all the books in both English and French growing up.

I had put the eyes atop their respective stalks in my portrait when my teacher came by, saw what I was doing, and said I could finish this one drawing as long as I realized that this was “not how it was done” and I did it properly after this.

Hence the poem.

I do not have that portrait at my fingertips. But, rest assured, if I find it I will make sure it makes an appearance here.