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.
A vital doctrine of animism is the attribution of conscious life to phenomena of nature. Even if our own beliefs about the soul and its corporeal habitats do not extend quite so far, though, the human mind still likes to anthropomorphize — to assign emotions and personality traits to flora and fauna as a means of extolling their value. Perhaps no one understands this better than a poet. This week, Isla Segal of Woodstock relays observations of the omnipresent, nonverbal exchanges that enliven every forest.
— Anna Forsythe, Young Writers Project publications coordinator
Trees talk
Isla Segal, 14, Woodstock
The trees talk,
you know?
They talk and if you listened,
you would know
they whisper
like kindergarteners
who can’t stand straight in line
but can jump straight
into mudpuddles.
They can’t stay quiet,
like my siblings late at night,
and the wind whistles sometimes,
and the trees call back,
you know?
And then the leaves twirl
down to the dirt,
but the branches still murmur
late into the winter,
with too much snow to talk very loud –
but they’re still talking.
I know.
