“Don’t Go!” by Grace Weinstein, YWP Media LibraryYoung Writers Project is a creative, online community of teen writers and visual artists that started in Burlington in 2006. Each week, VTDigger publishes the writing and art of young Vermonters who post their work on youngwritersproject.org, a free, interactive website for youth, ages 13-19. To find out more, please go to youngwritersproject.org or contact Executive Director Susan Reid at [email protected]; (802) 324-9538. “Youth is wasted on the young,” old-timers say with a chuckle, amused by naïve younger generations’ proclivity to let the wonders of life pass them by without the confidence or gumption yet to act. But the truth is, we long for the insulated (and irretrievable) innocence of our formative years even as we only just begin to emerge from them. This week’s featured poet, Isla Segal of Woodstock, laments the lost purity of early childhood — a time when our heads were markedly less full of the swirling concerns of the day.When I’d goIsla Segal, 13, WoodstockThey all say they’d visit dinosaurs, go back and dig for gold, meet their great-great-great-grandparents, be around when electricity was discovered. When the question is asked in get-to-know-you circles, I’ll say that’s what I want, too, and it will mostly be true. Except I’ll always think of when I was 5, or 9, or 11, or even last summer when I had lesson my mind,in my head,less to think about.What if I went to thenand watched myself be little,innocent,and soaked up the rich gold of youth?Read the story on VTDigger here: Young Writers Project: ‘When I’d go’.