About the Young Writers Project
YWP, an independent nonprofit based in Burlington, Vermont, engages young people to write and use digital media to express themselves with clarity and power and to gain confidence and skills for the workplace and life. 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, explore and connect online at youngwritersproject.org, which has only one rule: Be respectful. For more information, please contact YWP executive director Geoffrey Gevalt at ggevalt@youngwritersproject.org.
Cassidy Martin, a 12-year-old middle school student from Brattleboro, writes about what it feels like to be frightened in the woods. Rather than appreciating the natural world around her, Cassidy says she focuses instead on threatening dark clouds, shadows and mysterious “glowing eyes” in the fog.
In the Woods
By Cassidy Martin
[I] can think of the
rivers made of diamonds and ice,
trees with the blossoming buds and dancing birds,
pearl clouds of smoke,
valleys of green, rainbows of flowers,
emerald dragonflies skipping in the air
above the deep olive pond as the cat tails sway and murmur.
But I don’t think of that.
I think of the dark thunder clouds that only rain on me,
the shadows that watch as I pass,
glowing eyes in the white and purple fog that creeps in around me.