To Run the Second Mile by Gavin Liu {Inklings Book Contest 2024 Author}

Today, we are featuring Inklings Book Contest 2024 author Gavin Liu! He finished 8th grade this past school year and wrote a passionate prose poem called “To Run the Second Mile.” Our judges loved the passion for Gavin’s convictions, for a perfect world, and for running that shone through this poem. Continue below to enjoy it in digital book or plain text form.

To run the second mile—back arched, mind clearing as the world slows again—I leave behind empty flights of so-called progress—the windy-wind-up classroom managers—puppets—who drag me through paper-piled classes, repetitive tasks, stressful tests—meaningless busywork—I leave the path of their long tiresome, uninspired lectures—leave those who seek to stop my musical kite-strings growing stronger—eager kite-strings—loving the fresh air with breathing space, my inspiration beginning to bloom—my songs no longer disrupted—sprouting from my larynx—as my feet fly high above the track, I sing of ending that first mile—its too many bell-rings no longer clouding the way, no longer stranding us in rivers of traffic-noise and polluting white noise of so-called adult humans drowning-out the songs of baleen whales who lose the natural patterns passed down from their ancestors—their main way of sensing and thriving ignored—all for the drilling of oil and industrial shipping—selfish benefits for profit—I sing for how all our ancestors and us are hacked down—our wails just as unheard as Mother Nature’s—tortured into rigid society’s requirements—chainsaws of so-called progress leaving our bark and wood chips lying strewn around our newly-warped feet—running the second mile is not easy, yet our larynxes evolve—sing beyond troubles to forge new values and craft new strong kite-strings that help keep us and our imaginations connected and constantly blooming—absorbing the second mile’s generous music of life—the serenity of the balanced jazz “Mambo para un mundo nuevo”—”Mambo for a new world”—its plentiful chords, its rising and falling notes—each ringing low A leading me to lean further into the piano—a perfect note that grows a full-fledged rowan—the solid bursting five-note two-octave chord releasing the scent of creamy rowan flowers and the taste of bright sour rowan berry clusters that blend with the flowing in-time and in-tune moving rhythms running along the kite-string lines of the musical staff guiding me further into the second mile