[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.
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“Oh, wouldn’t it be pretty, down in Origami City…” writes Monkton-based Maddie Donaldson, this week’s featured poet. It’s within only three or four lines that a distinctly soothing, lilting quality is felt in the work and begins to delineate a lullaby dreamscape. The universality of Maddie’s words – the understood-by-all fantasy of climbing up into the clouds with a friend or partner to forget about the real world for a while – shines through just as brightly.
Origami City
By Maddie Donaldson, 15
Lovely, oh it’d be so lovely
if you would come with me.
We’ll take a trip, you’ll see,
down to a place so pretty,
to Origami City—
My fickle-hearted friend,
it’s just around the bend,
so won’t you come with me?
We can run past white paper houses
as if they’d blow away,
and climb the tallest skyscraper,
you and I—
Oh, wouldn’t it be pretty,
down in Origami City,
where we can watch the stars
from our tiny paper cars
as they flicker above?
Temperamental pal,
won’t you stick around awhile?
I bet I can make you smile.
If you trust me, you will see,
we can be—
So wouldn’t it be pretty,
down in Origami City,
just you and me?
