For Amanda Gorman, Youth Poet Laureate, US

Your voice dialled me up.
My voice was silted. Dried out
by writer’s block, imposter syndrome,
the whole lot –

I saw your smile radiate, heard
your inspired, Olympian words

and realised, what I had to do:
trickle my weak tributary
into poetry’s mighty river.

My drops, however mean,
can swell the force of currents
cascading toward our sea of justice.

Together, great and small,
we can be the light.