1st Place: “Taking Issue with Kahlil Gibran” by Lenore Coberly
2nd Place: “Olympic Peninsula” by James Davis
3rd Place: “Warm Afternoon at Jeff’s” by Connor Vine
Honorable Mention: “A Wink to Byron Katie” by Janice Sutton
Honorable Mention: “Trip Taking” by William W. Cobbs II
Honorable mention
A Wink to Byron Katie
Who are you without “Your Story”?
Without the losses
Without the many Betrayals
Without the Deep Disappointments
Without The Hurt, The Shame, The Pain?
Who are you REALLY? Deep Deep Deep within your core of what once was,
Long ago?
Before it All.
What was laid before you…….
Breath, Spark of Life..Joy….Purity….Freedom
Master Creator, Magician, Animal Speaker, knower
CHILD OF THE DIVINE, THAT LOVED YOU INTO EXISTENCE
Let it go; THE STORY——
Rewrite THE BOOK
Set fire to the PAGES OF PAIN
Tell yourself SWEET STORIES OF LOVE;
Even if you must conjure and create and muster up the stories from the grave.
START FRESH—
Start Now — Not another moment of breath to waste.
Days are not infinite—
BUT LOVE IS
Choose it. Fly with it. Let it course through your veins —
carried by the blood of your Ancestors.
~ by Janice Sutton
Honorable mention
Trip Taking
There is no old age, sailing thru good and bad.
Where once one has had his odyssey,
There descends peace afforded by long sleep.
Regard this sleep as a blessing
Made from hot sun to shade
Slowly unfolding a welcome secret door
To infinite rest and more.
~ by William W. Cobbs II
3rd Place
Warm Afternoon at Jeff’s
I floated cautiously across the yard, doggie bag in hand,
Toward the shady tree patch in the back, where Sophie likes to Go,
The perfect-temp rays flirted with my older, cautious body,
Old Mr. Sun intent on treating me like daisy petals.
I tallied the sounds, like birds on recess, and dried leaf scuttles,
Plus a plane’s high-whine engine, all joined in suburban chorus
With a back fence neighbor’s methodic basketball … Thump, Thump, Pause,
Backboard, Pingy-Bounce, Thump, Thump, Pause … as if played by a robot.
Mental embrace of the pale winter sun denied the day’s frown,
A lethargic radiance drifted up from every nook,
Making me want to melt, flat-out, on the pink brick path, exposed,
Yet wombed, in an atmosphere where nothing else ever mattered.
Those times are innocent, loaded – even more as my age creeps.
When I am snugly couched within them, each one more desperate
Than ten dozen similar other memories buried deep,
I realize the simple math from the best days of my youth.
It’s a cherished, transcendent moment, and I feel lucky every time I’m enveloped,
Knowing I’m graced with a presence of mind to feel these small, enveloping gifts,
Where I download knowledge best when I’m not really Seeking, where peace
Is a kissy-soft electric-blanket, wrapping every last nerve in chocolate.
~ by Connor Vine
2nd Place
Olympic Peninsula
Along the north coast countless timber trucks rise
Out of the coming curve and hurtle past.
Each one carrying logs,
Straight
Stacked
Strapped
Trimmed of branch and blemish,
The ends sawed blunt in a silent O.
On the mountain a broad swath of forest has been removed;
Gentle green grass erases all signs of stumps and brush.
Saplings are planted in tidy rows like grave markers.
The logs carry no memory of who they are.
Further west past a hundred curves
The land casts itself out in one final challenge to the sea.
There, where waves hollow out caves in the cliffs
And orcas play in the cape,
An ancient forest broods over the land.
Giants reach up to the sky, but not alone.
They grasp each other with their roots,
Some rising out of a single base
To sing and play together in the wind and rain.
In the season of their letting go
They hold each other in their arms.
Sons and daughters climb out of the rotting husks of their mothers
While their children push up from the roots below;
And nothing is lost.
~ by James Davis
1st Place
Taking Issue with Kahlil Gibran
“—for life goes not backward
nor tarries with yesterday.”
—The Profit, Kahlil Gibran
I fear the current
of long rivers
if we forget yesterday
when trains carrying coal
roared down the Guyandotte
to the Ohio and great cities beyond.
As the passing cars blurred,
ugly clanging stilled
the ripple of the river,
the whisper of wind,
the voices that could guide.
Yellow foam of sulfuric acid
From yesterday’s mine
Coated our swimming hole.
Trains still rumble,
carry deep earth debris
on aged tracks. Vulnerable
children live nearby,
their fathers still struggling
upstream —
~ by Lenore McComas Coberly