In this week’s Young Writers Project
piece, Katelyn Jewell, an 11th grader at Mount Mansfield Union High
School says she finds meaning in a world built entirely of words and says her
creation was inspired by Walt Whitman’s epic poem by the same name.
For more great student writing go to youngwritersproject.org
i.
I write myself, & I sing myself,
the
self-proclaimed penniless poet
with an
incurable hankering for the transcendental.
"Today I’m going
to save the mother tongue,"
I say every
morning over Irish Breakfast Tea & burnt toast.
I fracture &
realign my sentences
for the sole
purpose of assassinating
any renegade
dangling prepositions.
Still, the
best-known poets of our history
would scoff at
my use of red thread
in mending
broken dactyls.
I take the
disrespect of ampersands as a personal offense
& agonize
over which notebook to buy.
The last was
bound in black leather
& the pages
were edged with gold.
I am waiting for
the proper words
to fill it.
ii.
The narrowest
path —
though travelled
sparingly —
leads to the widest
expanse of possibilities.
I am on this
road,
no longer with
head down,
no longer with
eyes glued to the track.
My soul-windows
are open
to more than
just what drifts straight before me.
The night
between Cambridge & Underhill
is broken by three a.m. traffic.
This is where I
walk.
I look not for
pennies on the ground
but for dimes in
the sky,
& I grow
rich
though I never
touch a cent.