Poem wins Honourable Mention

So, after devoting the last year to promoting my children’s book and cozy mystery, I’m sending out poems again. And I was pleased to learn that my poem, “Here, on the Ground,” won an honourable mention in the Open Hearts 9 Poetry Contest of the Ontario Poetry Society. It will appear in an upcoming anthology. It’s also the title poem from my collection of poems by the same name. Here is the poem:

Here, on the Ground

 

No, I never really got over the loss of you

though to everyone’s relief I’m finally behaving myself.

I make tentative impressions on my days now,

like a child fingerpainting, and am pleased

to see I still have prints, can make a mark with my thumb and fingers.

Life is still sweet and there are new blooms

in my garden with Latin names to learn

and I am noticing again

how the poplar branches undulate in a tango with the wind

while the leaves twirl and make soft sounds

like castanets.

 

I hear things again:

the sluggish bee sullenly preoccupied with my delphinium;

the waves, pushed by motorboats, reluctantly

slapping the shore;

the sounds of choir singing spirituals on my tape player;

the snarl of a power saw biting down a tree.

 

But as you fly ever higher and farther from me

like a kite marking the sky with your brave colours

I stand, ant-like below, knowing

only this slender string connects us

and every tug

wrenches.

From Here, on the Ground  http://www.amazon.com/Here-Ground-Mar...