Mandi Dean, who is a junior at Smoky Mountain High School, received Honorable Mention in the NCETA Student Poet Laureate Awards for the following poem. It's great to see students writing sonnets these days!
The World’s Music
The noise that’s all around me fills my ears—
The bouncing, laughing, bubbly shrieks of glee.
A cry, a shout, and eyes welled up with tears;
Arpeggios formed in oddest harmony.
The school of bricks that looms two stories tall,
It swallows me into its rooms of chance,
With colors swirled on boards and down the hall,
And waves of voices twirling in their dance.
And when I seek my place of solitude
The trees whisper their stories to the wind.
The grasses sway and sunlight lifts my mood,
While birds sing under skies that have no end.
The music of the world is part of me,
And with it from the world I am now free.