YWP: 'Wait for it'

[Y]oung Writers Project, an independent nonprofit based in Burlington, engages young people to write and use digital media to express themselves with clarity and power, and to gain confidence and skills for school, the workplace and life.

Check out the most recent issue of The Voice, Young Writers Project’s monthly digital magazine. Click here.

Each week, VTDigger features a writing submission – an essay, poem, fiction or nonfiction – accompanied by a photo or illustration from Young Writers Project. YWP publishes about 1,000 students’ work each year here, in newspapers across Vermont, on Vermont Public Radio and in YWP’s monthly digital magazine, The Voice. Since 2006, it has offered young people a place to write, share their photos, art, audio and video, and to explore and connect online at youngwritersproject.org. For more information, please contact Susan Reid at sreid@youngwritersproject.org.

Photo by Lauren McCabe, 14, of South Burlington/YWP Media Library

This Inauguration Day, Wednesday, January 11, saw former President Donald Trump pass the torch of American leadership into the hands of now-President Joe Biden, but not without extreme contention. Richmond poet Eleanor Freebern, featured this week, reflects on this transition of power, the lamentable events of the era that preceded it, and the great undertaking of change ahead of us.

Wait for it

By Eleanor Freebern, 14, of Richmond

I see that he’s president, finally.
I see he seeks to erase his predecessor
and the tyranny that rushed through the administration that came before him.
I see how he is good, not bad, however simple those words may be.
I see that instead of looking down on the people,
he looks up to them and seeks to serve them, not himself.
Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country: That is his rule.
Ask not, What can I gain from this?
Ask, What can we gain from this?
How can we reverse the scars and tears that were carved into our history?
We cannot, should not, erase the pain of the people.
To do so would belittle all the suffering the people have faced.
We can, however, seek to eradicate the mandates, the sermonic rules that created that pain,
that suffering, in the hope that our actions will prevent it in the future.
I see how he is a bright spot in a dark sky,
scraping away at the mass of swirling, self-protecting, self-redeeming ideas
that trace the borders of our country. I see how he shows us that he cares.
He is a storm seeking to nurture the water-deprived ground and send ripples flowing.
Ripples of change.
Wait for it – what starts as an impact can quickly grow into rings and rings,
until a thousand ripples create a moving ocean,
a stirring of people reaching their faces to the sky and crying,
Finally!
as the water soothes their skin.
Some will hide, some will sequester themselves away, but that is their choice – not mine.
And I choose rain. I will always choose rain.
I see that he will do all he has set out to do, and quickly.
All I can say, all I can think is,
Finally. Finally.
And yet,
I think I expected relief. I think I expected things to change for me right away,
maybe for numbers to go down and smiles to go up.
But I woke up from a nightmare with half my lip swollen.
But I will wait for it.
Wait for it.
Ah, yes!
Finally.