Poetry Challenge: Navya from Arizona

In our latest listener challenge, the Battle of the High School Bards, we asked young authors to send in their poems about summer. The deadline has passed, and we’ll announce the winner on the show in a couple of weeks.

In the meantime, we asked one of the poets, Navya, 17, from Arizona, to read her submission about the demise of a tree house at the end of summer.

“Moving”

By Navya, 17 — from Arizona

We tore down the tree house walls,
rotting panels and musty curtains,
cast old treasures into the mud below.
We scrambled down smooth-worn steps that sank
beneath our weight:
slowly, suspiciously, as though we were strangers.
The backs of our necks were slick with sweat
under summer’s drowsy heat,
the afternoon languor profane somehow
in our holy demolition.
But we sacrificed ceremony, worked
on into the evening,
crickets chirping its smooth arrival.
We abandoned the carcass to morning,
broken and collapsed on the wet grass.
Later, I found you kicking
at the skeleton of our fort.
You saw me and you looked down, hard.
“Don’t act like this is sacred,” you said. “And when we leave,
Don’t look back.”