Song Of Myself

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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.

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