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.
“I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, ‘If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is,’” Kurt Vonnegut entreated us. It’s easy enough to find humor and magic in silver linings as a kid; less so, as we begin reading the news and paying bills. But “silliness-in-spite-of” is a quality this week’s poet, Gretchen Wertlieb of South Burlington, might argue is essential for our wellbeing, and for a life well-lived – might even, by one definition, be translated as “resilience.”
— Anna Forsythe, YWP publications coordinator
Ode to the simply whimsical and the unnecessarily dramatic
Gretchen Wertlieb, 17, South Burlington
Ode to those who make life into gold,
who bring us some sparkle as we grow old.
Ode to the places, friends, and small things,
for which credit is unequal to the joy that they bring.
Uproariously laughing in a too-quiet room,
or dancing a tango with the red kitchen broom.
The rush of arriving in the nick of time
to catch what is gone in the blink of an eye.
Ode to the fails, the crashes, the burns,
and ode to whomever they might concern.
Ode to friends, old and new, who you’ll never let go,
ode to kindness to all, even ones you don’t know.
Ode to novels, and stories, and handwritten verses,
long, run-on titles and believing in curses.
Ode to the feelings of heartache and loss,
ode to humanity, with all its faults.
“Cheers!” to the drama, the flair, the hurrahs,
the fainting couches, glitter, and decorative bras.
To all the outrageous, exciting, and new,
and to far too much confidence in the things that you do.
The quest of life viewed with a pair of fresh eyes
brings ambition to act and take to the skies.
Ode to the rhyme, the rhythm, the beat,
for wherever you go, that’s all you will need.
