Sunday, May 15, 2022

 ------Results of the 2022  Robert Frost Poetry Contest!----------

                     

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(No.1) 

    "Visitation at Dinner "    Linda Flaherty Haltmaier   Beverly, MA 

(Runners-up!)

Summer Thunderstorms                            Robert R. Bowie jr.      Monkton Maryland

"When a Black Bear Came to Truro"         Sandy Longley            Provincetown, MA 

"The Force of my Mother"                         Rosa Swann           Te Aro, Wellington, New Zealand.

"A Serpent"                                               Rosa Swann           Te Aro, Wellington, New Zealand.

"Something to be Said"                              James B. Nicola     New York, NY 

"Beauty vs Sanity"                                     Hailey Peterson       Lisbon, NH

"Loosed from the Ground..."                      Sandy Longley       Provincetown, MA 

"Pulling Back the Drapes "                         Joan Leotta            Calabash, NC

"Volunteer Coach: A Tribute"                      Michael Zahn         Poinciana  Florida

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Top Poem,  for the 2022 Robert Frost Poetry Contest

 "Visitation at Dinner" 

                     By Linda Flaherty Haltmaier (Beverly, MA USA)

It has been a while

since the gash in the ground 

swallowed my mother––

her brass and mahogany chariot 

slipped beneath the feet of the living 

and the crying,

each cradling a lily plucked in silence,

a starburst of remembrance

sanctified by the moment.


Life hurtled on,

gained speed, 

her funeral card dropped into

the drawer of confusing objects,

cousin to the junk drawer,

where locks of baby hair, worn keychains,

and collars of pets long passed

are stashed and pushed about––

their value utterly worthless

yet incalculable.

The paradox of what is left behind.


But somehow my mother showed up 

at dinner the other night

between sips of Cabernet

and knowing laughs with friends. 

Slipped the bolt 

from the other side 

and waved me through to a place 

where grace grows like phlox in May,

redolent and lush.

 

And as if sprinkled with  

the forgetting waters of Lethe,

I felt my armored heart bend

toward curiosity, 

filled with a fondness 

for the person she was 

and tried to be,

wondering about the origin story

of the freckled redhead 

who loved to play stickball

with the boys.

 

How this visitation occurred is unclear,

perhaps Dickens’ undigested bit of beef

or a strange alchemy of time, distance,

and red wine––

but something softened, 

rage gone slack

for a sip or two.


Stripped of my bespoke grievances,

I could see her beyond the threshold,

perhaps the way god sees us––

flawed and fallible,

worthy of love,

swinging full tilt 

at both balls and strikes.


---------------------------- sampled runners-up --------------------------------------------------------


From   Sandy Longley,   Provincetown, MA :

When a Black Bear Came to Truro


I like to think of him swimming the Canal

unnoticed, against the current, against

credulity, legs stronger than any freestyler,

a dark shadow in salt water and then

lumbering his maleness, his aloneness

north on 6A to Ballston Beach.

“It was a black bear, all right –

sure as you were born,” said Tommy Dyer,

a fisherman on The Little Eva.


I like to think of him, scratching his back on

pitch pines, leaving scat in his wake:

grubs, apples, seeds – steam rising like a signal,

and him mumbling, squeaking, panting–

a scent of a young sow perhaps, a scent of

Wampanoag fires, of ancient deer bones,

swales of genetic memory guiding him

back home under a purple sky – part

healer, part magician that was bear.

-----------------------------------------------------------


From Robert R. Bowie jr.
   Monkton Md  :

Summer Thunderstorms

As with the generations long since dead
 The fire and brimstone of the status quo
 Wakes him up from the safety of his bed
 And lightening frames him in the window

And photographs him in its afterglow.
 Tonight he feels his present and its past
As the summer storm also comes and goes.
 Conclusions are foolish in a world so vast.

For at the edges of his world and heart
Far past the farthest boundary of his grasp
Where ideas cause worlds to come apart
 He lives in this place that will not last.

He loves his life more than he can explain 
And leaves the window open to hear the rain.