Young Writers Project is a creative, online community of teen writers and visual artists that started in Burlington in 2006. Each week, VTDigger publishes the writing and art of young Vermonters who post their work on youngwritersproject.org, a free, interactive website for youth, ages 13-19. To find out more, please go to youngwritersproject.org or contact Executive Director Susan Reid at sreid@youngwritersproject.org; (802) 324-9538.
We do not choose our family (all we can hope for is that the stork is on his best match-making game that day). But sometimes, just as we’re finding ourselves, we can begin to notice the qualities in our parents or siblings that separate us – and that can be a difficult thing to come to grips with. This week’s featured poet, Rachel Brassard of Montpelier, writes from the POV of a forest bird grappling with her family’s outspoken and flamboyant attitude in opposition to her more gentle nature.
She who is quiet amid the noise
Rachel Brassard, 13, Montpelier
Here in the forest, there is a-waiting
a little bird, quiet and sweet.
She does not quite understand
how they could have born her,
these foreign beasts.
Where she is quiet, they are so noise-filled.
Where she is soft, they are so stiff.
Where she is dullish, they are so bright –
quiet in the feathers, not in the head.
She loves to dance now; they love to strut, so
she does not feel
it is the right place.
But she will put her sweetest feathers out
and hope that the others might one day see.
