|
|
Professional Poet Category Winner
HERONS
bY Judith Roitman
I walk into my tub
and the heron says: Stop! it’s night! you’re not supposed to be
here!
Coming down in the
plane the lights look so pretty, but it’s just L.A.
The actor playing
the porn star spreads his wings in the publicity photo, I’m not
kidding.
My husband can
tell you what every star is, but he’s not a heron, so what does he
know?
For years I’ve
been walking the dog not knowing that herons were roosting in the
trees right there.
When you see a
heron in a grocery store, be sure to ask.
In dreams I don’t
fly, I just walk inconspicuously a few feet above the ground.
I’m not a pelican,
so don’t put words in my mouth.
As for moths,
they’ll fly into the night light with the chickens, and that’s the
end of it.
Visiting the Southern Hemisphere
by Laura Lee Washburn, Pittsburg, KS
Everyone here is
worried about the stars:
too many shine bright: there’s extra milky way;
some line up at strange angles. We can’t find
the constellations we expect, though we admit,
few of their shapes ever made sense to us.
We expected the ground, the trees and the birds
to spike differently, to curve more sharply,
to branch larger and more extravagantly,
but the sky comes as a shock to some, so
vivid with stars as expected, but surprising
in unfamiliarity, strange as driving
on the left of the road where the ghost
car at your right pushes you near ravines,
pedestrians, bikers, ditches, and streams.
So far, I haven’t minded the sky,
haven’t worried about the night’s clouds
covering stars we might learn from books.
When one in our company suggested
we lie on our backs in the sun to contemplate
stars we can’t see but know to exist,
I said if I can’t see them I don’t believe
in them, which makes a joke regarding faith-
lessness, but I think it may also be true.
Why should I remember the ice and misery
of home and cold, the grief pressed down
under a breastbone, the long days of office,
sunless, repairs waiting, the pain of breath?
Like the stars in this hemisphere or that,
in daylight waiting for night, they come back,
it comes back. Everything stays and is felt
whether we chose notice, amaze, or worry,
that pocket stone that presses into dreams,
the new planet whose light blankets dim stars.
|
|
|
Nonprofessional Poet Category Winner
CHANCE ENCOUNTER
BYJan
Strecker
Early morning,
strolling along the winding path
hoping to beat the heat of a July day,
lost in my own troubled thoughts when
eyes sensed before actually seeing.
You, standing
erect, preening by the water’s edge.
Me, cautious, moving toward you closing the gap
between us.
Each, studying the other’s intent,
your long neck cocking from side to side to find
the best position for observation.
As I neared, your tension mounted, a raised foot,
wings twitched, still you stayed.
As if connected,
we honored each
other’s presence, shared a moment in time.
With a final look and a single flap of wings, you lifted
off the ground and elegantly glided away.
Mesmerized, I
watched,
Oh, great blue heron,
my troubled thoughts flew away with you.
Diamond Mirrors
by Donna Lynn Lash Wolff, Kansas City
The night called
out to me and
I stepped barefoot into her evening beauty.
My hair was unbound in the dark breeze and as
I walked my garden became a misted paradise.
Moonflower vines
covered the arbor in green tangles with white
balloon-skin blossoms larger than my outstretched hand.
Hawk-moths hovered
on blurred wings, tongues drawn to their
perfumed glory.
The earth and I, both young again, together beneath the
forgiving moon and shadowed sky.
In that moment, you weren’t far away; and you still missed me.
The stars above had coaxed the buds below to open and shine
in a matching, diamond-mirror constellation.
When morning came
and wilted casings littered the ground
like spent shells, I knew the beauty had not been lost,
for it had traveled straight to my heart and
the Milky Way.
|
