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.
In Tune
Astrid Longstreth, 16, West Bolton
I always come back to
the synchrony I find in the wild,
the insignificance I feel
when the rain pours down,
giving breath to growth.
The birds are all singing, differently
from one another,
but they are together all the same: chaotic in the perfect way
that only they can be,
a choir conducted singularly by the earth that tilts towards the sun each spring.
One of those birds could fall to the ground in the middle of the forest
and it would leave your life unchanged,
yet at the same time, it holds all the importance in the world
as it gives rise to something beautiful, a legacy that will continue and go on.
Life is a cycle, they say, and this is true — yet it is also something that rises and falls, and brings love and grief, and is wholly a journey worth walking.
I need no other bible than the wild,
and crave no feeling more than the spring rain upon my face.
