May 6, 2025

Fast Forward: A poem from the future

Note: This is a stitched poem I composed using lines written by the 40+ students who entered the 2025 Belfast (Maine) Free Library Youth Poetry Contest. I had the honor of serving as the contest judge and emceed yesterday’s reception for the participants and awardees, where I shared this poem with the students and their families. “Fast Forward: Poems from the Future” was the theme of the contest.

Open the door and see a world—
not endangered, not extinct—
where the polar bears get as much ice as they need,
where breathing isn’t hard and where we taste
new things and wear nightgowns made of cheese and devour
donuts in streets filled with love.

It could come true.
I don’t want to talk about 1,000 years from now
or wait one hot minute longer.
It is the future and we can wake up,
our minds sharp as invisible knives.
We have the chance to stand around the fire,
skip a rotation of rocks from shore
watch the tides, see where the boats row.

We can plant a seed, stand in the pure, unpolluted pool
of our eyes when we tell each other our dreams.
And we can dream bigger, not of fear or time moving too fast
but of octopuses and violas we practice on stage, of rooms
waiting to be seen, of the feeling of floating out in space
and finding where we belong.

There’s so much to think about,
and I hope this reaches the right person.
Not the one whose jersey is in the rafters,
or the one who cut down all the trees,
or the one who yelled, “Don’t waste your time.”

I mean someone who knows what it means to say
“I miss you” or understands life is not a chase,
and somehow, through the ash and scars
looks up each night and sees how close the stars are,
then reaches out, certain they can touch them.