Editorโs note: Young Writers Project, a Vermont nonprofit dedicated to helping students write well, will be sharing several exceptional pieces of best student work each week at VTDigger.org for special display over the weekend. We hope you appreciate the young writersโ viewpoints, imagination and experiences. Please let us know what you think.
Samuel Boudreau, a senior at Bellows Free Academy in St. Albans, says he wrote this poem, Today is the Day, to reflect the multiple perspectives of a family โ a mother and two children. He also wanted to highlight the importance of having a โ โbeach day,โ a day that is used for complete relaxation and pleasure.
โIn a world where we are constantly doing something, talking to someone or thinking about what lies ahead, it should be essential for every family to take a day off,โ Samuel says. โWe get so caught up in our own lives or in everyone elseโs lives that we forget how to sit back, relax and, as the poem says, โlet the ocean swallow us whole.โโ
ย
Today is the Day
By Samuel Boudreau
Today is the day we
skip work, the park and school.
Today we venture to look at ourselves
in the Oceanโs face.
My husband Mark
is a lawyer, and he has
trouble getting time off.
He, unfortunately, has to
miss today. Henry, the eldest,
and Lucy, the youngest, always
love it when their father comes
to North Shore with us. He likes
to hurl both of them into the
water. After hours of playing,
their faces are like
a salt block for a horse.
When Mommy surprises us
with a beach day, itโs always
the sunniest day of the year!
Itโs like sheโs Mother Nature
and can change the weather.
We usually go to the park on
Oak Street, but I guess the
day is too beautiful for
the park. Henry never has a
smile on his face, but today he does!
School is a place where
children die and adults
are born. I hate school,
all of the rules, tests and
teachers. Beach day, however,
is like my action-hero-filled
toy chest โ people to
play with, no rules and
the ocean is an endless
playground of shells, urchins
and seaweed.
Today is the day
we let the Ocean
swallow us whole.
ย
About YWP
YWP publishes about 1,000 studentsโ work each year here, in 19 newspapers across Vermont and in parts of New Hampshire and on Vermont Public Radio. It runs an online teen writing community, youngwritersproject.org, which has only one rule: be respectful. It works with teachers in 63 schools who use YWPโs unique, free digital classroom platform and provides many with ongoing professional development mentoring and other teacher training. And it is developing NxN, a writing center at its Burlington headquarters. For more, go to youngwritersproject.org or ywpschools.net.
If you are a youth or you know a youth who is passionate about something and works hard at it, be it building models or flying or playing the drums or climbing cliffs, please contact Geoffrey Gevalt at ggevalt@youngwritersproject.org and tell him something about the youth and how to get in touch with her or him.
