Ronit Das

Ronit Das is currently in 7th grade and was the youngest finalist in the 2020 Housing Leadership Council Youth Poetry Competition. His work is published in the anthology, I Have a Dream: Inaugural Poems for a New Generation (2021). He is also featured in the program, “Celebrating Young Poets,” produced by The Midpen Media Center and in “Breathe,” a Youth & Ecopoetry Project funded by The Academy of American Poets and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Poem on Belonging

ANCESTRY

We stand here the present day
Thanks to those here long before
We changed a lot from back all the way
When we didn’t have smartphones and more

The people then shaped us now
More than we could ever know
The ones before us who would plow
Through the trouble for us to grow

Their work for us
Our work for the next
We can give a food surplus
Make their lives less complex

And we will continue to grow
As we join together, connect
And we will together know
Or find out at least, what's next?

Copyright © 2022 by Ronit Das. Used with permission of the author.

Ronit is a contributor to the collaborative poems, “Breathe” and “The Many Voices Word Karaoke”.