July 2011
Featured Reader: Cyndee Bowdoin
First
Place:
First Thought
by Donna Westbrook
It
is morning
and there you are again-->my first thought of any
importance--
just after breakfast
and my reflection on the waves
l
watch at the shore,
very high this morning.
l think of you
walking
the beach
a few miles north,
bundled head to knee
with bare
feet
playing dangerously near
the water’s edge
my first
thought of any importance,
how beautiful the reflection of sunlight
in
your hazel eyes,
how beautiful your smile
delighted
waving
arms at your first love
--l know it is not me--
the sea has you
has
always had you
first...last
but l am content
to be second
fiddle
very close
making as much music as l can
to delight you.
lam
not the sound of the waves
but the echo.
Sometimes
l know the
echo delights you as well.
Second
Place:
DEEPENING DROUGHT
by Judith DiBisceglia
Small
pools of thinning water
minnows swim in circles
tighter each day
imprisoned
in a shallow grave
Skull of a small animal
now brittle
exposed to sun
deep cracks
in drying mud
Mouths gasping on
the surface
of stagnant graying green water
Great blue heron '
feeds
on the dying
Further down the canal
scores of tadpoles
huddling
among lifeless palm fronds
breathing watery mud
Fish
lie on their sides
helpless in water receding
rising to surface
slowly
suffocating
blood flesh encased
bubbling mud consumes
buzzing
orange headed flies
break the silence
Scattered empty snail
shells
clams and mussels sweating
the last moisture is within
wet
earth turns to sugary sand
Mid-day light strikes
bluing
broken abalone
in perfect reflection
interfacing survival's shadow
Fearlessly
turtles tracking
out of dying canals
towards the bone of flight
wing
the rain dancer
Scent of death,rattling dried leaves
thousands
of lives leaving
movement out of mud
spiraling upward into the
absolute
Honorable Mention:
MY
ZEN GARDEN
by Bob Alman
my zen garden
is plamied as a
place
for harmony flowering
in measureless space
my zen
garden
could lead you to seeing
that all good and evil
reside
in one being
my zen garden
envelops a spot
where every
thing
either is or is not
Honorable
Mention:
A Summer Day
by Shirley Kent
Red-hot
sun rises from the sea as gulls squawk overhead. Torched
light
brushes my face.
vultures fly
first morning light
no
shadow
Along the river, mangrove roots taste salt air while
seedlings float
in pelican fields. Calm water prevails.
cloudless
sky
green tree frogs
offer up rain
Sails trimmed, boats
glides but docks empty. Lapping waters caress
wood pilings.
big
oak
male cardinal sings
soft breeze
Father and son, fish
lines flung far, anxious. Plastic pail waits on
cement dock.
after
noon
over open waters
thunderheads
Special
Contest: Clerihew
Patricia Whiting
Clerihew
Bob
Dole, a Kansas resident,
wanted to be president.
People thought
him droll-
instead of I, he said Bob Dole.