Olivia Powell

Vermont
I LOVERMONT. Every once in a while, whether shivering in the passenger seat of my family’s silver Volvo while looking at the frost melting off the back of an idling pickup, or anxiously scanning the curving pavement of route four for something to settle my nervous gaze on in the speedy driver’s ed car, I see this bumper sticker. Sometimes it is a fresh sticker, just recently removed from a pile on an old wooden counter of a general store, and sometimes it’s an elderly sticker distinguished by its singed, peeling edges and lack of the glossy sheen of its earlier days. No matter the condition it’s in or the car it’s attached to, I always find myself wondering what the driver loves about this one, little state in the enormous country of the United States of America. Could this love originate in the sharp taste of a Cabot cheese? Could it be the adrenaline rush and enchanted, sparkling trees from a powdery ski trail in the mountains of Killington?

A Perspective

By Olivia Powell
Woodstock Union High School, Grade 10

I am a home
To the spotted fur of the jaguar,
Blended into the damp
Bark and twisting vines.
To the twinkling eyes of frogs
Whose deadly venom lies unseen
Behind the pastel blues, reds, and yellows
Of smooth, sultry skin.
I am a home
To the silent flutter
Of glamorous feathers
Trailing behind the colorful body
Of a parrot.
To the chaotic
Hoots, wails and cries of monkeys
Whose territory has been invaded.
I am a witness
To the growth
Of a young plant
Timidly poking its head through the soil.
I am a witness
To the persistent tapping
Of an unseen beak
Against a speckled shell.
As I am a witness to life
I am also a witness
To the destruction of life.
I am a witness
To the foreign, nasal roar of saws
The defeated crashes of ancient trees
The crackle and oppressive heat
Of hungry flames.
I am a witness
To the shredding of
Wood, leaves and vines

Why You Should Never go to McDonald’s Again

By Olivia Powell
Woodstock Union High School, Grade 10

Under the Spell of Facebook

A blank page stares back at you
The skinny, black curser blinking
Throbbing
Mesmerizing your blank stare.
What to do about beginning
A three page paper about
The life of a deceased author?
The time is 9:15.
I’ll just take a break, you lie to yourself
As the Safari icon begins to bounce
And you are enveloped,
Taken under the spell of Facebook.
Clicking through new photo albums of
Classmates and family members,
Observing any changes in top friend statuses,
Looking for new bumper stickers
To describe your various
Inside jokes,
The pressure of the assignment is forgotten
As you become even more engrossed
Even hypnotized
Under the spell of Facebook.
The time is 10:13.
You sigh, when you realize
You have gotten nowhere
Accomplished nothing
And time has slipped into oblivion,
Spent cheaply by looking,
Staring
At a glowing screen.
And through the tapping of keys
And the clicking of the silver mouse.

An Invention

My Glorious Locker

For the first few weeks of school
It sat, dejected along with the other
Identical, green doors.
All of the others beside it were used as
Walls to lean on
Backgrounds for early morning gossip
Surfaces for shimmering birthday banners
Or hard surface to bang a head against
After realizing that a lab report was due that day.
Perhaps the metal door
With the metallic hangers inside
Became jealous of all of the other
Glorious lockers,
Lined up down the hall.

But when my bag became too small
To carry the textbooks, binders, and lunch
I found myself frustrated, standing
Before that skinny, green door
Staring blankly at the faded combination numbers
Scrawled on my hand.
Over and over again, I spun that dial
To the right, to the left, and back around again.
But the defiant locker
Wouldn’t budge
To yield its empty metal walls.
Day after day, I desperately
Twisted, spun, and turned
That black dial,
Hopeful that one day

A Summer Day with Lyra
By Olivia Powell
Woodstock Union High School, Grade 10

The summer day began with a high-pitched whimpering noise that woke me from sleep. I quickly jumped out of bed, got dressed and let my three-month-old German Shorthaired Pointer puppy, Lyra, out of her black, metal crate. I picked up her enthusiastic brown and white-covered body, carried her down the stairs, and quickly put on her collar and leash while she skittered around the tile floor of the mudroom, happy to be awake and alive and eager to run outside. I opened the door and was enveloped in a smell of earth, trees, grass and that indescribable, fresh, invigorating scent of the outdoors. Everything was green and bursting with summer life. She did her usual routine of finding the perfect place on the lawn and leaving her business there.

Horses in the Meadow

By Olivia Powell
Woodstock Union High School, Grade 10

My speckled dog trots up ahead
Her tail twitching back and forth
Clueless, while she sniffs deer tracks, as to what this walk is worth.
The sunshine sifts between the leaves
Dangling off the limbs
That weave to form a canopy, making the sunlight dim.
I wander in between white trees
Quick feet on the moss
And when I reach the ancient wall we both jump swiftly across.
Chickadees twitter, dry twigs snap, a cool breeze on my face I sense
And then I notice with startled eyes, before me is a fence!
My pace gets faster, she swiftly looks up
And what soon comes in view
Is a green, glorious and glistening meadow, sparkling with morning dew.
She pokes her furry brown head through the fence,
I turn my head to look below
And there, sleek and stunning, two horses I see in the meadow.
A symphony of feelings arises in me
When I comprehend what I’ve seen

To Fly or to Read Minds?

By Olivia Powell
Woodstock Union High School, Grade 10

I run through the woods

By Olivia Powell
Woodstock Union High School, Grade 10