This year’s ACPS Poet Laureate is Yahney-Marie Bostick Sangare – a fifth grader at Charles Barrett Elementary School.
Yahney-Marie, who has dreams of being an author and is in the process of writing her first novel “Dancers”, was honored by the School Board on Thursday.
She read her poem “Stories” to the audience. She said that the hardest part of writing the poem was making her free verse poem flow correctly. She asked her friends to review it before entering the poem in the competition.
I am thrilled that Yahney-Marie is being recognized for her literary talents again this year. Yahney-Marie’s writing has always had such a beautiful voice and unique style that is beyond her years. We have been so lucky to have her as a student here and are looking forward to seeing what she will accomplish in future years as she moves onto middle school,” said Charles Barrett Elementary School Principal Seth Kennard.
“Stories”
Stories fill the air
Like water in the sea
It always seemed to me
That they seemed
Just too far to away
To grasp
Until the light
I grab them, catch them,
And watch them tell their stories.
I see them everywhere;
In people,
Hidden among themselves
In animals,
In their own coded, quiet language
Stories drift among us
Too many for me to even hear
Every car that goes by in the morning
Is filled with a story
Every person in the hospital
Has their own moments
I see stories
As real as I see people
Their exterior as apparent
As their interior
And I yearn to ask
What troubles them
As their tears fall
Steady
Or what made them smile so
Like the sunlit days
That I prance among the meadow
And once, after a long time
A friend is there
To quench my need
For any trace of a
STORY