FLORIDA STATE POETS ASSOCIATION
The Enchantment Award
Terrible Beauty
She’s calling, she’s calling,
it’s too late to close the door,
Laughable to shut the windows,
to huddle on the floor,
The blast that met your summons
has blown apart your roof,
Now must you lie there naked,
undone, rendered and proofed.
You asked her to come to you,
invoked the grassy glade,
You risked an invocation
you knew at best in part,
Now, ‘they know not what’,
repeats inside your cringing heart.
You thought you were the catcher,
the weasel in the rye,
Yet you never wake to sunlight
no matter how you try.
How reckless your decision,
not to tremble when you should,
Not to recognize the sunlit space
is purposed by the Wood.
Mae’s Kitchen Memorial Award
Grandmother’s Birthday Dinner
The Menu of the table set before her:
Cornish hens served in Cornish tins,
Noodles Alfredo, Uncle Fred’s favorite,
Stir-fried snow peas, after first snowfall,
French bread, a la poetess.
Pickled beets, echoes of borscht
And The Brothers Karamazov, who will come too.
Jerusalem artichokes to honor
Iconoclasts burned at the stake in their shifts,
Who, of course, are still coming,
Parsley, also known as Peterselie,
Soul of Saint Peter, for garnish,
And Bechamel, in honor of the french
Side of the family who still mistake
Cake for bread, keeping however, their heads,
Coffee punch with Ice Cream-
The tropics meet the tundra,
And to top all, the sweet sour
Culmination, Sunburst Cheesecake –iced
(She turns 90 today)
With, Ahh, lemon glaze.
CHB Publications Award
The Wheel of Birds
Nothing is better than hilarity for two
a room for two, wine for two
tickets for two to the fair.
We ride the wheel that turns on high
looking down from the sky
just the two of us, removed.
Miniature people from far off towns
we see from the top down
a thousand thousand and one clown.
He searches for an eye up high
an augury of forgiveness,
doves on the fly,
White birds let loose in a flock
a wedding gesture lost when the lock
sprang from the crate falling off the truck,
They circle, scanning the ground
for crowds with champagne and cake,
tents, borrowed garters or blue keepsakes.
As evening sun seeps to west
finding no tree for rest, they roost two by two,
on the spokes of our slowing wheel.
The last ride brings us, silent, to ground,
as mud is drying all around, doves cooing,
the booths shut, and all lights turned off.
We held hands, too quiet to jeer, too high to scoff,
somewhere fortune folds her slings,
and we hide our heads beneath our wings.
The Josephine Davidson Memorial Award
Rampart
The old beloved is a darkened sky
a withered rose petal wilted and dry
in a cold and deserted fortress hall,
the new love is a morning in July.
The old love was a scribbled paper doll,
pressed to my chest, a childish ink stained scrawl
a fever dream inclement, manic grown,
then torn and crumpled thrown against the wall.
The new love has parapets of his own,
his red heart hides a buried cherry stone,
I stand in rubies at his bastion
my unfettered hair flies free and windblown.
The greenest valleys amble wide, gold-spun,
grapes grow purple in floating phoenix suns
the forest doe stands seeing and clear-eyed,
all birds rise up, our burgeoning runs.
Howard & Sandy Gordon Memorial Award
Rain on Mounds
She sat near the window
watching the rain fall
perfectly vertical,
big drops, a drenching rain.
See, she said, this rain is not like
that of yesterday, each rainfall is
different, whether of intensity,
or breath, the space between the drops,
the angle to ground,
and the subtle difference of sound.
This rain has beauty, though
the ground is already wet, not only
the beauty of utility,
it is like the feathered wing,
the dark that rings.
As is this child, she said, turning to
the album of family photographs.
See this one, there is not another like him.
I know you can see, even from the photo
how different, how precious, how greatly
the world would love him.
All love him who see him, it was always so,
these are those who dying away from us
make all the world at each telling of the story
fall apart with weeping.
The mounded earth in rain.