YWP: ‘Water’

[Y]oung Writers Project, an independent nonprofit based in Burlington, engages young people to write and use digital media to express themselves with clarity and power, and to gain confidence and skills for school, the workplace and life.

Each week, VTDigger features a writing submission – an essay, poem, fiction or nonfiction – accompanied by a photo or illustration from Young Writers Project.

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, share their photos, art, audio and video, and to explore and connect online at youngwritersproject.org. For more information, please contact Susan Reid at sreid@youngwritersproject.org.

Has a single ordinary object ever snatched you from the present day and deposited you into a snippet of memory or imagination? For North Bennington poet Martha Hutcheson, all it takes is a simple glass of water to send her thoughts flying back to pleasant days spent poolside or bobbing with the ocean waves.

Water

By Martha Hutcheson, 10

[A] clink and a splash
from a full glass of water
get my senses started.
I watch the big glass
with green stripes around it,
avidly wondering and yet already knowing
why a simple glass can get me tingling.
I know why: water.
At the very thought of this word,
I’m pulled first to the ocean.
Crashing melodic waves lap the shore,
reminding me of warm sand
and cool water.
Floating among the salty open sea,
I feel more myself than ever.
Zip… and I’m in the above ground pool
with flecks of grass in it,
splashing, swimming like a seal,
and smooth like cream.
Again, a change:
I have been transported to the lake
with its cold tingling,
its slide off the dock,
its shouts of ecstasy.
The pool again.
Then the ocean.
Back to the lake.
And then with a whoosh…
I’m staring at the wide glass
with the green stripes,
thinking no more about
water.