Summer is here, and area schools have let out. To kick things off, we're launching a new season of WYSO Youth Radio. We’ll hear stories from students across Dayton, Springfield, and beyond.
For this episode, Springfield School of Innovation High School students Destiny Breslin and Dora Abigail Molus share their poems.
Molus said her journey with poetry began because of a friend.
“Someone suggested that I join a writing club,” she said. “It was very interesting. I gave it a try and I liked it.”
Her poem "Nature" is a meditation on beauty and fragility. She draws listeners into the world of coconut trees and birdsong in her home county of Haiti and asks what happens when that beauty is taken for granted.
WYSO Youth Radio is produced for the ear and designed to be heard, not read. We strongly encourage you to listen to the audio by clicking on the blue "LISTEN" button above, which includes emotion and emphasis not on the page.
A gift of God to the universe.
Sit under a tree,
feel the wind coming,
colorful birds singing in the branches,
bees in the flowers,
Pluck a mango,
a cherry,
a papaya.
Take pomegranate,
remove the seeds with your hand,
the juice,
the colors,
the fragrance.
Communicate with nature every day.
Each season has its own beauty.
At the beach, sit under a coconut tree.
Hide yourself under its shadow from the sun.
Sip coconut water.
Nature keeps you healthy.
But what happens when the people with hearts of stone come and destroy it?
What happens when nature starts fading away?
It cries for help, seeing and hearing creatures, small and big, disappear in the blink of an eye.
Nature gives.
Nature helps.
It can hear you and transform you.
Nature provides.
You all who are here and in front of me,
You and I have this gift. Communicate with it every day.
It is a blessing.Dora Abigail Molus, "Nature"
Destiny Breslin, the other student poet in this piece, said they use writing as a form of healing.
“It’s kind of a therapeutic thing,” Breslin said. “It helps me cope with some stuff.”
Breslin's poem is untitled. She said her piece is about sweet, elusive love.
Early spring blows by,
carrying love's soft call.
Visions of sweet nothings in the breeze fluttering within me.
I have seen the melody of a heart,
beating in time with the flutter of the butterflies.
Swelling my heart is a star smile, a rise that makes one's heart soar with joy.
Through the sun's painted flowers,
high up in the breeze,
carried by bees,
a blissful state for which my heart will always ache.
If a day where low-sounding glasses are to be a reality,
I look to the cool waves to carry me,
away from the sorrows of heartbreak,
far from the mind's cage,
to a place where one can lie in thought about how the day fell from grace.Destiny Breslin, "Untitled"
Thanks to the principal of the School of Innovation in Springfield, Kathy Lee, Beth Dixon from the Mental Health Recovery Board of Clark, Greene, and Madison counties, and the Springfield Museum of Art for their help with this story.
WYSO Youth Radio is made possible with support from people like you, the Virginia W. Kettering Foundation, and the Ohio Arts Council. It's produced at The Eichelberger Center for Community Voices.
