Choose Who You Meet

by Carl Sandburg and Cole Roenick

The single clenched fist lifted and ready,
Or the open asking hand, held out and waiting.
Choose:
For we meet by one or the other.
We meet here.
We meet there.
We meet everywhere,
We may never meet
But we will meet someone
We truly love.

Students at Maine’s Berwick Academy are no strangers to poetry.  With an annual poet-in-residence program Berwick affords students the rich opportunity to steep in poetry every April for a full week, in addition to poetry encounters within their English classes throughout the year. Some students take especially to the craft in deeply moving, often profound, beautiful, and sometimes surprising ways.  Four such poets are featured here:

Bella Gorman (entering grade 9), Belle Greenshields (entering grade 8), Noah Rich (entering grade 8), and Cole Roenick (entering Grade 8).

These students learned from this year’s poet-in-residence, Marjorie Thomsen, and created something truly valuable and fresh, inspired by poets they read, such as Carl Sandburg.  They graciously agreed to share their poems in our middle school poetry collection, and two of the poets also read their poems aloud in our evening community poetry event.  These poets are brave, inspired, and inspiring.