Poet Promotes Peace With ‘Linguistic Style And Purity’

“Peace is a river of color/washing away the stress and horror/and filling the black and white of life/with a rainbow of happiness, enveloping every husband and wife …

“The glow of the people, the glow of the animals, the glow assuring one that to hate is not fate, but a state of mind./That glow, given time, will spread throughout generations, beyond yours, and even beyond mine.”

Also in the first-place winners’ circle were the following Windward students: Castle High’s Kacie Libby-Paulaau and Vince Ruiz-Hyde; Heeia Elementary’s Makala LeStrange-Tupouniua, Kaycie Kamark and Randy Aiwohi; Le Jardin’s Giselle Bittick, Emmalee Cornish and Noah Goebert; St. Anthony’s Skylen DuPonte and Julia Morikawa; Windward Nazarene Academy’s Jaiden Cabuag and Mason Plunkett; Kahaluu Elementary’s Chynna Agatonu and Puohala Elementary’s James Emert.

All poem entries will be attached to the International Peace Poem, considered the world’s longest peace poem, which originated in 1996 with verses by a 6-year-old girl on a visit to Maui. It now contains more than 175,000 lines from young poets in 120 countries urging peace.