Young Writers Project is a creative online community of teen writers, photographers and artists, which has been based in Vermont since 2006. Each week, VTDigger features the writing and art of young Vermonters who publish their work on youngwritersproject.org, a free, interactive website for 12- to 18-year-olds. To find out more, visit youngwritersproject.org, or contact Executive Director Susan Reid at sreid@youngwritersproject.org and 802-324-9538.
If failures “are finger posts on the road to achievement,” as C.S. Lewis once wrote, then we can expect and even hope to encounter many along life’s stroll: some to strengthen our patience and resolve within ourselves, others to broaden our worldview and inspire new ideas. This week’s featured poet, Ursa Goldenrose of Hardwick, looks out on small defeats as opportunities for personal growth and intellectual expansion.
Let the light in
Ursa Goldenrose, 14, Hardwick
I dream to drink the sky,
it would taste so sweet,
a sea of blue and stars
and everything in between.
If we are all
just droplets
falling from what’s above,
will we crack and break
when we finally
hit the ground?
If my droplet
becomes only small fragments
of itself,
what will happen to my world –
will it shatter as well?
Or might it widen?
With all the light
suddenly being let in –
if by
falling we are opening,
if by breaking
we are growing –
then why do we fear our failings?
If we don’t
push open the doors,
if we can’t see
that there’s more –
if our droplets,
being shed from what’s above,
trap us in imperfections,
hold us in tiny worlds
of our own creation –
do we lose
each other, and the sight of
what there is
that we are not?
When raindrops
hit the ground,
one by one,
softly exploding,
you have to
strain your ears to hear them.
But when they fall and break
as one,
they are loud and strong,
like thunder.
Maybe our worlds
need to be a little wider.
Maybe when they crack and break,
we’ll become a little wiser.
