Poem

Furry and wise but bold with pride smart as a fox slick as a fox no fright in sight goes out at night comes home with a snack possibly a rat! Katie Furman, 10 Fogelsville, PA

A doorway to the starry sky where the stars shine so bright in the night you can see as clear as daylight the world full of wonder your eyes like a window for your soul grass so green and clean it almost seems as if a dream Katie Furman, 10 Fogelsville, PA

 Keen Pointy Knife-Like Razor-Sharp Angled Piece Busts And Smears Ink Blots Most Sublime Yellow With Tiny Little Black Dark Lines Indented, In Divinely Wrapped Peeling Paper which Flakes Away with Each Sharpening Within the Motor with its Grating Noise Which Grinds at The Soul, Paper Peels Away like my Worries As I Pick up a Pencil And Write my Sadness Away like Stardust on a Blust’ry Eve, Finger Rubs ’Gainst Course Material Of Sun, Lemon School Bus, Gorgeous Golden Onion Skin Shaves Away And Ashen Grey-Colored Graphite Collects in Tube Like Powder Sugar Soon Turned Charcoal, Lovely Pole of Saffron Freeness Most Gorgeous Block of Fuchsia Elatedness which Allows a Take Back, Redo, Precious Second Chance That Disappears Too Fast. Reach for the Sky Ismini Vasiloglou, 11 Atlanta, GA Arjun Nair, 9 Midlothian, VA

Hanging Vines What one may miss once Will never miss twice There’s always new New plant New wind New ant hole And it’s the little things That make the world Welcome to our birdbath A crimson red leaf Is shed from a tree Drifting slowly Slowly Slowly Into the crystal-clear reflection of the water Only disturbed by the ancient moss That lives there Spring is coming New is coming The lively chirps of a bird Make people smile Chirp Chirp Calling for her young To drink The cat screeches The mouse yelps The wind howls With them The ants cry Please don’t trample us A historical chase Cat vs. mouse Through the golden fields Over the log Through the grass To the bath The mouse trips And the cat Gets dinner The stream is calm Little sounds Chika de-de-de Croak, croak But it’s interrupted Splash! Splash! The beavers The great pine tree Covers all Gives them shade Reminds them she’s alive With a little bonk The grass grows The squirrels chatter The birds return The flowers bloom And the world is back from the dead A robin swoops down So elegantly Wings spread wide Cherry-red breast Ripples the calm Of the water And is gone again Gone The leaf The chirp The sounds The chase The stream The tree The return The bird What can we learn? Nature Has its language. Rex Huang, 11 Lake Oswego, OR Anna Weinberg, 11 Washington, DC

Oh, I got a new snail. Wait! Wait! He is dead. Autumn E. Weinreich, 6 Wilmette, IL

Beautiful Blue The fur blurr enough slow to know it’s her that a foot or maybe a wild ear she turns the corner ripping sod, leaving a heap to run through as she comes leaping through the underbrush or meadow of our yard making sounds of happiness and wishing of being a car to vroom down those highways of pavement, tail spinning, she turns the next corner leaping, becoming a bird for one fleeting moment before landing with a plop on the ground as she skids to a stop finally over with her own song, Roo’s song, of noiseless pleasure. Sevi Ann Stahl, 10 Bend, Oregon Sage Millen, 13 Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

Colors It’s like this beat That’s trapped in my head— It can’t escape, won’t escape. It eats at me, bothering me, Telling me to stop, to recognize everything it does. It pulls me out of the dredges of life, But sometimes into them too. Why is it there? I don’t know. What I do know is that it drives me, makes me me.   Lucy Rados, 13 Buffalo, NY Sage Millen, 13 Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

Once, the new cat. Cats. Cats. Oh cats. Please come with me. Be with me. See what you see. The Tuna Cat. Oh cat. Are you the cat? The Tuna Cat? Yes. You are the Tuna Cat. Autumn E. Weinreich, 6 Wilmette, IL