In a Word: Expansive

Each Wednesday afternoon, the Farm School students are given a word as they leave school. They go home and write a creative composition using that word. Thursday morning at tea / snack time, they read their composition to the group. The exercise has very few boundaries. It might be poetry, prose, a story, a fable, a diaglogue, etc. The given word may be a common word, such as "fire," or it may be a new vocabulary word requiring research before use. Often the words are an extension of something happening in the school community. Each week we will share one example of the "In a Word" series.

IMAGINATION

Seconds turn into minutes, minutes to hours, hours to days. The expansive plain devoured each step he took, so that it seemed the dry, hot desert would never come to an end. Exhaustion and dehydration began to sink in, hunger followed shortly after. Images skipped past his sight, tricking him each, miserable time. A vulture spiraled above him, trailing a dark shadow in its wake. A small, blue feather floated to the ground.

He fell to the got, dry earth, making a soft thud. His head swam as he dragged himself across the ground, heat beating the life out of him every second. He collapsed again and rolled onto his back. Water, water...water was all he could think as he tasted grains of sand on his tongue.

A gulp of hot air, a last beat of a heart, and then..."Bobby! Get in the house now!" A small boy lying in a sandbox jumped up and ran to the back door of his house. As he ran past his mother in the doorway, she swatted him gently and picked a blue feather off of his shirt.

-Rachel, 9th year student