Lily Jones, PVS sophomore, was one of six finalists for the Riverside County Teen Poet Laureate competition. Friday, directly after performing her Poetry Recitation for our school finals (she’s good at reciting poetry, too), she was whisked off to Riverside for the Poet Laureate ceremony and final announcements. Lily came in first runner-up! She also was named finalist in the Jane Block Prize for Teen Environmentalist Poetry. Lily is an active poet, actively writing, submitting, and sharing her poems. Below is reprinted one of her entries in this year’s Riverside Teen Poet Laureate competition: her original “Well of Words.”

Well of Words

Our minds whirl so much swifter than

the words that, trying to keep up, 

tumble from our mouths.

Sometimes they waltz elegantly,

but mostly they tumble out jumbled.

At times our astute minds are 

too complicated for our simple tongues.

At other times our mind prevents us from

speaking our truth.

Sometimes even the world prevents us 

from telling our truths.

Our thoughts are forced to stay at a standstill.

So we sit in drawn out silence

or meaningless conversation,

while the letters of thoughts in our brilliant minds

plunge deeper down into a well,

the place that we are too nervous to share.

Keeping track of twenty-six letters

in different combinations

placed in different patterns 

is arduous.

So the well becomes a jumbled heap,

a tangled cluster of extreme emotions

and thoughts that create a unique mind.

Yearning to reach out 

and discern this well brimming with letters,

we begin to ink our obscure thoughts.

The muddled letters creep up from the well,

sunlight from the surface clearing my

mind of dark fog.

The time varies for each individual

but the letters always find their rightful place.

Words spill to the surface,

as ink on paper becomes the 

fundamental way to organize this well,

making sense of each thought

as they become amalgamated.

There is a pattern of words

waiting to be summoned.

These individual patterns create a poem.

An intricate concoction of emotions,

that are hidden there for safekeeping. 

Words that taste sweet,

and perhaps ones that leave a bitter aftertaste.

Together, they craft something beautiful.

Poetry.

An artform filled with emotions.

Something that allows our minds to speak

our truth, pulling from our well of words,

fusing everything into a meaningful story.

The refined dance of words carry our essence,

so that we may be seen.