[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.
Even today, Robert Frost is one of the most widely regarded poets in American literary history, known especially for his exploration of nature and the universe at large. Drawing inspiration from “Design” – in which Frost describes the diligent efforts of a spider while alluding to greater existential themes – this week’s Bradford writer Lauren Wright takes a stab at her own circle-of-life sonnet, just in time for spring.
Flower Garden
By Lauren Wright, 17
[I]n a field mixed with sage and poppy,
four legs hide between the trees.
Only faded white spots are visible.
The creature scopes out the landscape,
sniffing through the weeds.
It tiptoes through the tall green grass,
extends its pointed head toward the ground,
and tears the color from the weeds.
It can be seen lifting its face toward the sky
whenever something shuffles by,
and stands like a statue until it’s sure
there’s nothing left in sight.
For now, when you look past the trees,
you might catch a glimpse of red poppies
poking through the still-uneaten grass and leaves,
or feel the dirty, minty smell of sage.
But from this distance you cannot see
the tiny lines that hold a leaf a different way,
or the contrast of color from the sunshine of day –
for the details are too small from afar
(which the deer will not see either,
before eating them all).