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Telling Room: 'A Strike of Stars' by Cameron Jury

Every Friday this summer, we're featuring the work of young writers in partnership with the Telling Room In Portland. This installment is called "A Strike of Stars" by Cameron Jury, a seventh grader at Scarborough Middle School. The poem was inspired by a school workshop on "Wild Maine Weather."

We looked up,
up into the sky.
We looked at the stars,
searching for what was inside those shining dots of light.
We imagined their movement.
We stood listening,
listening to peace and nothingness;
the sounds of the black night.
We were hopeful.

One came,
a shooting star flying across the night sky.
Daring to stand out,
to challenge the moon for attention.
Calling for our amazement, it was
brave enough to come out of its hiding place
in space.
We held our breath.

It seemed even the crickets stood silent, watching,
not believing it was real.
I shut my eyes tightly.

The image of the star
shooting across the sky
played in my mind
as I made a wish.
A wish for peace,
a wish for more miracles,
a wish for the world.

We stared back up.
Our cold fingers shot up into the air,
pointing out more and more.
With many came power.
It was like a strike,
a strike of stars
against being hidden, against being lonely.
None of us moved.

We had become one with the night.
We were all stars, united with the blackness.
Together, we held hands.
Soaring across the sky,
21
we joined them
and didn't stop flying until the sun awoke,
and the day came.

 
Cameron Jury is a seventh grader at Scarborough Middle School. She is one of 26 students to be selected for publication in the annual anthology of the Telling Room, a nonprofit writing center in Portland dedicated to the idea that children and young adults are natural story tellers.