Young Writers Project is a creative, online community of teen writers and visual artists that started in Burlington in 2006. Each week, VTDigger publishes the writing and art of young Vermonters who post their work on youngwritersproject.org, a free, interactive website for youth, ages 13-19. To find out more, please go to youngwritersproject.org or contact Executive Director Susan Reid at sreid@youngwritersproject.org; (802) 324-9538.
When the holidays end, it’s natural for the low light, chill, and slush of the season to bring us down — and in that state, it can be difficult to remind ourselves that winter is still replete with its own special kind of magic. This week’s featured poet, Astrid Longstreth of West Bolton, extols the beauty of freshly falling snow (whether the white flakes be gently landing in silence or whipping through the air with gusto) and the childlike wonderment that it produces inside us.
Snow does something magical
Astrid Longstreth, 15, West Bolton
Snow does something magical, I think,
creating a blank slate — can I start over now?
It fuels first loves, the paths criss-crossing in a storm, a blizzard that lingers in the memories.
People have been lost to the snow, frozen fingers lost forever — but I think I have been lost to it in a different way.
Falling flakes from skies of gray and wind blowing, fighting against those who would wish to tame it. Snow is free. Snow is magical.
Because if I look out my window on a night where all is dark, and if the snow is falling down, it sweeps me away.
Maybe everything will be okay?
For one night, one storm, I am lost to the snow, and I think if I got lost inside a blizzard, I might not even feel the cold for being so enchanted with the crystals in my hair, slowly turning it white as if age has caught up to me in minutes. But when the warmth comes and it melts, it reminds me I am still young — but I feel as if I have been alive for centuries as I gaze into flurries that have brushed cheeks and cold that has blushed them, snow that has been here for centuries.
Snow does something magical, worries forgotten, futures rewritten, hope reignited.
I am lost to the snow each winter, and when summer comes I wish I could feel its cold kiss once again.
Read the story on VTDigger here: Young Writers Project: ‘Snow does something magical’.