About the Young Writers Project
YWP, an independent nonprofit based in Burlington, Vermont, engages young people to write and use digital media to express themselves with clarity and power and to gain confidence and skills for the workplace and life. YWP publishes about 1,000 students’ work each year here, in newspapers across Vermont, on Vermont Public Radio and in YWP’s monthly digital magazine, The Voice. Since 2006, it has offered young people a place to write, explore and connect online at youngwritersproject.org, which has only one rule: Be respectful. For more information, please contact YWP executive director Geoffrey Gevalt at ggevalt@youngwritersproject.org.
Avery McLean, 17, of St. George, is a sophomore at the Lake Champlain Waldorf School. She writes about feeling light and happy and inspired by someone.
Allegro
By Avery McLean
[I] find light in the way you hum a melody and look to me for the words.
My heart is brimming and overflows more often than my eyes these days.
I never thought I would see this day,
when the world seems to be a collage of happenings
colliding and jumbling around in a beautifully messy allegro.
I find happiness in the music you make by simply living –
the noise of your sock feet slipping along wooden floor boards,
or the tapping of your fingers on the table as your hand searches for a tune and coffee burns your tongue.
I can see your subconscious mind in all its glory,
a chasm of color that crunches and curls and cartwheels,
and my admiration spills over.
I find inspiration in you,
and I tap a few bars down your arms.
I have never felt so light,
as if I am the violin in the spring concerto.
The music in your very being has taken me over,
and I am flying.
