Poems to Honor Wake Forest’s Past
Initiated by a group of Wake Forest High School students, this project is meant to collect the stories of Wake Forest residents young and old. Wake Forest is a rapidly growing town thanks to the urbanization of the local area. Many people are coming during this time, so we wanted to understand the story of Wake Forest. Amongst the noise of growth, stories risk disappearing, and we don't want to let them become lost.
Wake Forest Wonders
by Nikholas Svajlenka
New York, the Empire State,
Home of thousands that see a chance.
Youth can travel with great wonder.
The elderly must find a way to find joy.
Travel to Wake Forest, one of them thought!
Many opportunities will come for those unable to partake in what they did.
Friends and family would welcome her.
This would come to bear fruit after joining the Centre.
Her heart may always be in New York, but her home is Wake Forest.
A New Spring in Wake Forest
by Zara Kemp
From the bustling streets where the Bronx first began,
Through Brooklyn avenues where her early years ran,
And decades in Rockland through the bitter, deep snow,
Juanita decided it was time she should go.
Tired of shoveling her car from the freeze,
She looked to Wake Forest for a much warmer breeze.
Her daughter had journeyed to this southern town first,
And through gentle visits, awakened a thirst
For a change in the scenery at sixty-seven,
Underneath North Carolina’s wide canopy of blue.
Five years have now passed since that April she came,
Though the town she first greeted is hardly the same.
"Seeing is believing," she laughs as it grows,
With nonstop construction wherever she goes.
The streets fill with traffic that constantly swells,
But compared to New York, it is peace where she dwells.
The tall southern pines stand their ground through the noise,
While Juanita finds comfort, connection, and joys.
She found her old Brooklyn in Raleigh anew,
Two locations, one church, and a pastor she knew.
A Baptist connection, a welcoming dome,
Where her faith bridged the miles and gave her a home.
And the friends at the senior center…what a joyful sight!
Her Wake Forest days are made wonderfully bright.
The oldest of nine, with a heart built to care,
She carries her family's sweet wisdom to share.
Her mother said always protect one another,
A truth she holds close, like the words of her mother.
Treat folks with respect, and the love will return
A beautiful life, and a lesson to learn.
Forward, Not Back
by Samantha Lee
They arrived in different seasons of life.
One from the quiet rivers of Wisconsin,
one from across an ocean
stepping into Chicago air.
Both with nothing but forward in mind.
Wake Forest was not always theirs,
just a place that grew around them.
Streets stretching wider,
shops filling with footsteps,
a town learning to carry more stories.
She walks downtown,
past windows and memory,
finding joy in small things
a street you can wander,
a life you can hold close.
He kneels in the grass,
laughter of grandchildren ringing out
like something permanent,
like proof that he arrived
exactly where he needed to be.
They speak of movement
across states, across countries,
through years that did not ask permission.
Family, they say,
is what stays when everything else moves.
Never give up, she insists,
the words echo like a prayer.
Listen more, he adds,
as if silence is its own kind of wisdom.
And somewhere between them
is a shared understanding:
life does not wait for certainty,
you step forward anyway.