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2005 Poetry Contest for Writers over 50
2005 Winners on the Web
We had so many poems to choose from that this issue has spilled out into the World Wide Web!
Scroll down to read all of winning poems, or go directly to a poem by selecting the poet's name.
The Practice of Scales
Every hour comes another student,
uncertain as light on water,
thumbs clinging to Middle C,
fingers splayed like rushes caught in pond ice.
Slow tempo on the scales,
I show them,
then double, triple time, four notes per beat—
the scales are a ladder
to climb the music—
college mornings I brought my metronome
to small rooms with old uprights.
Major, minor scales, thirds, sixths, tenths,
hands separate, hands together,
then diving deep into Chopin and
Brahms, embracing Bach.
In the dorm someone said Play—
I plunged into a Prelude,
blanked in the middle,
couldn't find the missing measure—
it's okay to lose your place, I tell my students,
if we remembered every tune we ever played,
we'd drown—parallel scales, contrary,
chromatic, natural, harmonic, melodic,
again until you get it right—my students
rise like minnows to the lure
or not,
cast for me at times a glint
of light bending through water.
Wendy E. Ingersoll
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Pa's La-Z-Boy Leather
My brother, the collector,
keeps an overstuffed chair
plunked in the corner
of his junked Silverado—
an authentic La-Z-Boy leather,
complete with winding rows of
dull brass nails.
It sits, gathering weather
on its slopes and curves
shaped by years of downsittings,
uprisings—
its cracked back taped shut
like poor men's upholstery.
When I ask why
he keeps the old elephant,
his face softens. He waits
before answering.
"Sit up there on a warm spring day.
Pa's lighting a good nickel cigar
and Ma's in the kitchen
grinding onions for hash."
Phyllis M. Lee
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A Soft Place
Bold and wild,
arms spread wide as wings,
we navigate life on lids
of icy ponds,
cut patterns together. Circles
within circles, rings strong
as wedding bands. Whirl
through years, wobble
a little as earth turns on its axis,
and mornings crack with frost.
Now,
winter wept frozen,
you let go of my hand. Pass,
thin as a blade, through pain, glide
on the edge of leaving. Search
for a soft place
to fall.
Ann Falcone Shalaski
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I Visit My Father's Grave and We Talk
Here are all the Mondays that ever were your life.
And here are all the dinners as ordinary as Mondays.
And you, at the table—back to the wall—buttering bread
as you wait for everyone to come and sit.
And the sun, coming in under the curtain, setting
in your eyes, a winter sun, an early sunset.
Here are all the Monday sunsets.
How many suns set in your life?
I think all of them.
I think only one.
How, like all the Mondays of your life, must that day have seemed.
And you, just that morning, dressing, absent-mindedly
peering in the mirror smoothing your unruly eyebrows
as you checked to be sure your tie was straight,
your collar flat;
as you took a fresh handkerchief from the drawer
and refolded it;
as you passed a brush over the toe of your wing tip
then, as you left the room, glanced back,
out of habit,
not knowing it was the last time
you'd check to be sure the light was off before you left.
There is either this, or there is Nothing.
Stop running your fingers through my thoughts.
You'd better get on your way soon.
Andrew Fader
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Seeking Immortality
When at last released from the bondage
of this physical shell how glorious
it would be to become immortal
to be reincarnated as the opening note
of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony
to vibrate with joy
or be reborn as a pigment of paint
the faint brush stroke that almost makes
the Mona Lisa smile
or to assimilate the shape of a word
that leaps to life from the printed page
to be the "to be" in Hamlet
to be proud of my shadow, to endow
memorable gifts on all who had endured
the years of my mediocrity.
Rose Mary Sullivan
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Carrier
I carry my parents' sadness
wherever I go
in the grocery
I sigh when the collard greens wither
in the deli section when confounded
by the discrepancy of aged cheese
and fresh cheese
in funeral halls
where one is supposed to be sad
I jab a hat pin into the deceased
releasing the sadness
a little
in forests of fallen trees
and standing trees
I note the failure of nature
sadness in all its severity
Others avoid me
as they would the flu
or some other infectious malady
but this lone opportunity to be a carrier
to unburden my parents' sadness
is worth it
every lost friendship
can be explained
every night alone
can be explained
by saintly responsibilities.
Mimi Moriarty
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Ice House
I forget January until it happens:
the squeeze of cold and the living water in the cove
covered with archipelagoes of ice,
two swans sleeping, like flung white pillows,
on one of the floes.
Winter was like that when I was a child,
only harder and longer. Didn't it snow
every day?
At the edge of our yard, where Daddy
shoveled it up from the sidewalk and driveway
it grew into a mountain, an alp,
and in it I made my house.
A fine dwelling, my white mansion.
It had no window, but its walls were shiny
as cake frosting, solid as stone.
I lived there by myself. No one else
was invited.
It was where I learned
the solitary life.
Daddy said, Honey, you know
it's going to melt when spring comes.
But he was wrong.
Jody Primoff
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Memphis Blues
she hated Memphis.
she was weary of its blues and its blacks,
and its whites whose smiles stuck to their faces
like the summer air clung to her sheets.
she wanted out.
almost as much as she wanted an air conditioner, a big air conditioner
like the ones she'd seen in Sears
that day she wore her white cotton dress
without sleeves and without her bra
to let her nipples feel the coolness.
a salesman named Jones
told her what the air conditioner could do
and how he would deliver it personally.
she turned her back to Jones and his 8,000 BTUs.
the breeze licked dry the perspiration that had run from her neck
under her hair which she now held up with her right hand.
Jones faced her again.
he sweated now.
her silence neither denied nor encouraged.
Jones was stuck.
he told her her looks
could melt the ice sculpture at the Peabody.
she turned to stop the trickle down her cleavage.
Jones offered to buy her the damn air conditioner.
that was last June.
she wore no perfume then.
she chose not to compete with the magnolia she worshipped,
and other men compared her to.
she'd listen long enough for them to squirm,
long enough for them to remind her
of the plastic picks her husband used
on his steel-stringed Martin.
B.M. Koplen
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Big Bad Wolf
Grammie is a wolf, acting like a bear.
She thumps through the house on padded feet,
bumps into walls, crashes through doors,
causes the floors to shudder and shake.
She rakes the air with murderous paws.
"I'm going to eat you up," she declares
and snarls in her too-big, hairy voice.
The children trip and fall as they run.
They scream and dive beneath the table.
Backs hard against the wall,
they try to hide. "Not for real!" they call,
"No, stop! Not for real this time."
But Grammie's having too much fun.
She's the biggest, scariest thing on the planet!
Each time she moves, the earth tips
and threatens to slide out of orbit.
She stomps on mountains, making them flat.
She walks on oceans, stands on trees,
snatches the crescent moon in her jaws
so her pointed teeth glow iridescent.
The children are screaming bloody murder.
They clutch their arms, cover their heads.
"Not for real," they plead.
"No, stop! Not for real this time!"
When she gets to the table and peers under it,
she can't stand the look in their eyes.
"I'm not going to eat you," she says
and feels herself deflate into a woman
with stiff fingers and achy knees.
Then she smiles
and from under the table
comes a grateful sigh.
Even Grammie knows
there's only so far she can tip the world
before she needs to set it right again.
Marian Plaut
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The Masturbation
Let me pose a question. If you, by chance
rode the cross-town bus to the downtown station and,
due to over-crowding, found yourself
sitting next to yourself.
That is, you and another you are both sitting,
that is squished together on the same seat staring at
each other, and you smile
and so do you.
You ask the time and you reply you have no watch.
Of course it's late. The subway car fills further.
A sharp bend in the tunnel throws its contents to one side.
You and the other you are pressed together.
Your breast rubs your breast.
Your legs entangle.
Your face is in your hair.
An awkward state of affairs
indeed. Glancing round self-consciously,
straightening your back, you've found yourself attractive
and it's natural to react.
What do you do? What do you do?
Do you ask yourself to dinner? Suggest a quiet corner bar?
Your heart is pounding in your chest. There isn't time
for second thoughts. In fact, the train is at your stop.
Careful not to turn around, you exit down the crowded aisle.
Pushing through the narrow doors, your feet touch safely
to the ground. And you are you. And you're alone.
The woman of your dreams rides on
smiling at the secret.
Jamilah Alexander
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I have wondered all this fine Spring
Why I was so humbled by last winter.
Why do I linger more
On the dying in us all
Than on the wild frolic
Outside my window?
Stephen Wiest
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During a Tour of a Friend's House
It's too soon,
and he's not the one,
but I pretend he is
as I follow him
through the house.
I think about falling in love,
learning his ways,
if there's room here for two.
I wonder if he'd mind
if I cut three sunflowers
to put in a vase on our dinner table,
if we'd light blue candles at night,
if he'd care if I opened the door
to let in the scent of jasmine.
His house is perfect for one,
and mine are the thoughts
of a woman who sleeps alone.
I wonder if I'll ever fit
into someone's life, know another
man's touch, and what it means
when he turns his head
to the window and looks beyond
the blues and greens in the garden
before he reaches for me.
Victoria Melekian
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Child Waiting
It's a new kind of reality:
a child waiting in the dark
liquid, in her own long movements,
to be born into the unison
of sunlight and air. Life
exploding within life,
an egg penetrated
by a fish-tailed grab bag,
encoding my husband's cheekbones,
my own sharp knees. This
will be all our futures howling
in the hospital's fluorescent gleam,
with brown eyes, I imagine,
in deference to a history
not my own, the drum beat
of the Andes: a hacienda,
dark-haired beauty flirting
beneath a eucalyptus. Soon
an infant will curl in the hollow
of my arms, smelling of dried milk
and tomorrow. The chords
of yesterday, of a world
I will someday
not be part of, singing.
Suellen Wedmore
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Glow Worm
Why don't our fingers glow?
Mary Elizabeth Castinetti asked
on our second grade field trip
as our class wondered at
an iridescent worm on the forest floor.
Our teacher Mrs. Klaus said
Human skin isn't designed to diffract light.
Then, I would have said fingers
are just skin, but some creatures,
like that worm, are made of magic.
But I have since seen skin glow:
when you hold your hand up to the sky
and the sun backlights it,
your blood pumps like
neon inside you,
or else, just after running,
when you're winded and sweaty,
your face, lustrous
with the glow of defeating death,
breath by carrying breath.
Once, late at night, I saw my father
in the yard, bent into the work of digging,
his bare arms shimmering with the sad silver
of moonlight, that borrowed light
of a rock without its own burning.
The next morning, my mother told me,
my cat had run away.
I knew exactly where she was:
buried out back, a subterranean sun
lending the worms their glow.
Lana Hechtman Ayers
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The Neighbors
I never see my neighbors sitting in their trees,
never see them, while pruning weigelas,
drop shears to lie down on mortgaged lawns
to feel their spines rotate with the earth.
None ever dances in diaphanous gown
under a summer full moon.
None has mice nests in gas grills,
while I have two spun from orange
fur, like puffer fish with scattered shot eyes.
None claim to have seen a snake, while a black
rat suns itself daily between my porch boards,
and a golden hognose punctured a toad
last week under the impatiens.
Sometimes, I feel a surge of love for my neighbors
that goes through the walls, and makes my eyes sting.
I want to cry out,
"La Petite, Neighbors! Fling open your doors.
Come out, and leave your door opened.
Be careless, reckless even."
I want to see them do cartwheels
across the dew sticking grass.
I want them to parade, men in white
shorts and shirts, women in white dresses
with blue sashes, playing flutes,
and trailing ribbons behind.
Colleen Gibbons |
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Knotting
Today I finished the embroidered girl
You began so many years ago.
Where your needle stopped
Mine is here, sharp as rebuke
Or rue. So, my quick stitches
Woke the faded pattern
Blue as vein or rust
Filled in the daisy field
And the bonneted girl
Who waited for your hand.
Stephanie Demma
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Head Cases
My wife wonders
what I'm thinking,
as if thoughts
were mine
instead of livestock
bolting from slaughterhouse
pens, or rusted relics
of rolling stock
headed for a siding.
My cerebral boxcars
slam together:
bums fly off in tangents
for a hot meal,
an easy woman,
a night's sleep—
but she strokes my temporal
lobes that spew cravings
for chili con carne
and caviar
while my sensory cortex
spreads a proper English
garden, each
species labeled in Latin.
I ask her,
"What are you thinking?"
and being as practical
as a bird of prey,
she eats
an acquiescent caterpillar
of deja vu crawling
from my sylvian fissure
with the always open mouth
of instinct.
Robert Pringle
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The Cat Sits Outside a Glass Door Looking In
so like a grenadier with regimental passivity,
fixed stare. There is a vision recorded behind eyes
deep within a secret mind, where no muscle moves.
Its once bright invigorate coat of hair hangs ruff-like,
a vagabond with no course or direction, exhausted.
Yet I know one thing for sure, this cat
has a sense of place, a corridor of belonging,
distinctive as a groove running without motion.
This sphinx, this residue, waits at the glass door
as if it had disappeared. The form is there
steeped in thoughts of heterodoxy. A preexistent will
passing into its next form without knowing.
Babbie L. Cannon
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One Theory of Composition
Here, under mossy white trunks of alders,
I am waiting for salmon to come up the creek.
In the black pools by the undercut bank,
in vaulted and shadowy passages under
hollow stumps of gigantic cedars,
I am waiting for salmon to leap over riffles.
On the damp foot trail along the creek
where ruffled mushrooms sprout under logs
in the twilight of browning sword ferns,
I am waiting,
waiting for salmon to spawn eggs from death.
In the thin anthem of Soapstone Creek,
in a night-fog of saplings where one word
contains spirit-who-splits-around-rocks,
I am waiting to decompose.
Soon I will type only syllables or letters.
I will say buh or mmm like an infant.
I will be as non-linguistic as a salmon.
Or like the creek,
hummmmmmmm
Penelope Scambly Schott
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There Was the Night I Heard
the skunk and rock squirrel
tangle under my bedroom floor
shaking me suddenly from a dream.
The night I heard branches snap
and saw the bear gorging
on heavy ripe fruit, peach juice
glistening on black fur in moonlight.
The night I knew the fire ants
in the hyssop garden
were dying, an entire underworld
poisoned by me.
It was the night I painted
my bedroom closet door
hot pink in desperation
and went down on my knees
praying to St. Francis
O let me find a way to live
with wildness
O let me find a way to feed
these hungry gods
Lonnie Howard
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At Fifty
This is what middleage comes to,
my friend Bob and me
swapping stories about our doctors,
comparing notes on the annual rectal exam
like judges at an Olympics event
awarding points for style and technique.
Bob says his guy's savage as Saddam,
his finger a probing bayonet.
I praise mine for swabbing
so much KY jelly on his glove
it's only the implicit humiliation
and the drycleaning bill that hurt.
Now that I've turned fifty
I'm rewarded with a PSA test
to detect prostate cancer
before it settles in like an unwanted guest.
I've never had the exam;
I'm nervous as a fraternity pledge
facing the mystery of initiation.
I know they analyze the blood, but
still I have certain anxieties.
Bob assures me, though,
they take the blood from your arm.
Charles Rammelkamp
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living large
the tomatoes were between the garage and the river,
on a bench in front of the antiques shop,
with a sign saying HAVE SOME TOMATOES,
soft and warm from the rain
a guy stood down in a grave
so i spoke to him, thinking poems
he leaned on his shovel (poem #1)
he looked away (#2)
"this ain't no fun, i can tell ya"
i was disappointed to hear him say,
hoping for some Old Gravedigger's Elegy (#3-7)
but Billy took the story up,
remembering shooting people for the government
from a mile away, lying with spiders and snakes
"while they threw everything at you,"
crawling 30 feet in half a day
on the weedy ground, never trees
the way he'd say "cone of shock,"
the spiraling rush of a big slug
enough to tear a shoulder off, just missing, going close by
made him scratch and think,
then he went back to fixing my brakes
have a tomato i said
looking ahead to stopping safely,
the smooth mound tamped over the dead
in my dear town, of a summer morning
Peter Chapman
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The Cactus Wren Ascending
After thunder, rain, and sudden clearing
(something doesn't sleep when we sleep),
between South Mountain and downtown Phoenix, Arizona
(wars are always raging somewhere),
a townsized rainbow hovers over acres of flat landscape
(loud alarms sound around the clock)
in the middle of the desert day
(people are depleted; uranium is enriched).
Of those driving under the rainbow, some are unaware
(some are troubled but they don't know what to do),
some are stunned to wonder
(a spot of not-time to slip into)
by a full range of colors appearing from nowhere
(despair is relieved by grace that comes suddenly).
Diana Manister
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