[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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This week, Young Writers Project presents two exceptional pieces from our recent writing and visual art contest, “A Celebration of Trees,” created in partnership with Branch Out Burlington! (BOB!), a volunteer organization based in Burlington that has been planting, protecting, and promoting trees in Vermont since 1996. The contest was a big success with 166 submissions of writing, photos, and art. We would like to thank all contestants who participated, as well as BOB! for their sponsorship!
On the list of most common deathbed regrets, a lack of commitment (or finances) to travel has always hovered at the top. The Golden Birch Award recipient, Sam Aikman of Richmond, reminisces about a trip to Croatia’s Koloĉep Island with affecting poignancy in this winning poem, lingering on one image representative of the island’s soul that deserves true veneration: the fig tree.
To the fig tree on Koloĉep Island
By Sam Aikman, 17, Richmond
First Place, Golden Birch Award
When I say “fig”
I do not mean the kind
you get at the supermarket
in a clear plastic tub.
I do not mean the kind
that is shriveled, and brown,
and crackles when cleaved open
by a child with dirty nails.
When I say “fig”
I mean the kind that dangles,
purple and glowing,
from a thicket of foliage
above a cobbled street.
Have you ever stood
at the edge of the Adriatic
under the shade of a tree
as old as a country
and eaten the pith of a fruit
the color of the sky at dusk?
What is this sudden urge we call longing?
When, in the late afternoon
of a Saturday in January,
as you loiter under
the fluorescent lights
in aisle six, you demand to
have the heart
of a past summer on your tongue.
You buy a box despite them being
old and dry,
and stand with your fingers
in your mouth
at a bus stop on the corner of Dorset,
halfway around the world
from the tree
that has not likely been long
lost to sun.
When you consider the heat,
and the distance, and all the time
it takes to deliver life (first to your
palm and then to your lips),
really, what is the point
of waiting a moment longer
before returning
to the fig on Koloĉep Island?
Since when has fruit never been
enough of a reason to leave?
