“Art in the
Air” Poetry Contest Winners -- January 2004
Theme: Water
First Prize—$100
Jeanne Wagner, Kensington, CA
Six Riffs on the Rain
1
We trace the half-life
of rain on the window,
this affinity of water for glass,
like a hunger for a harder self,
soul brothers in transparency.
2
Rain falls inside its own reticence;
it falls through the hospitable
vacancy of air;
we hear it on the rooftops
and the trees,
tapping along the slick surface
of the leaves
like a blind man’s stick.
3
Birds hunker
under the wet, slate-green
wings of the pine,
feathers disheveled into downy warmth,
waiting out the weather
inside the weather of trees.
4
We have built our house
too tight.
Leaks form in the life of denial:
walls abut walls,
the roof cants down to the gutters,
gutters to drain,
each connection, a fault-line,
waiting for water.
5
The rain gauge
doesn’t measure rainfall,
only water caged
inside a tube of calibrated glass,
while outside,
it rises and falls
through the permeable air,
this window’s imperfect membrane,
the segregating cells, the skin,
the body made up mostly
of water.
6
I want to know how rain
sounds by itself.
Not rain hitting wind
or walls or sidewalks,
but the sound of its freefall,
lines lengthening in air,
the way sleepers range
along side each other,
their dreams dropping softly
into the fluid absence
where their bodies lie,
their breath
inside each other’s breath,
sibilant, insistent,
like the sound of rain
falling with rain.
2nd Prize: Jennifer Wheelock, Atlanta, GA
Emily Dickinson Takes a Walk
The bones have bid me out to see
hydrangeas tip and pour—
fists full of blue on pale strained wrists
like oceans hung on oars.
The air clears like a frosted pane
enveloped in a sigh.
I’m caught between a hopeful soil
and sky unduly dry.
Movement was not my intent—
my work is sitting still.
But my feet are pails of water
clambering to spill.
Honorable Mention: Karen Hoffecker, Birmingham, MI
The Lure of the Lighthouse
Perhaps it is the hoary
tower rising,
stark above
white-washed rocks,
its yellow eye
shuttering quickly
in evening light.
Perhaps it is living
far from life’s ache,
the steady light
pitiless, stroking
the stainless sea.
Perhaps it is the lone
life of the keeper,
scrubbing scarred
surfaces, wave-swept
wounds relentless
as the rhythm of the surf.
Perhaps it is the single
beam stretched
like silk across the bay—
soft eye whispering
think of me, think of me.
Honorable Mention: Morgan Baylog Finn, New Hartford,
CT
Downpour, 4 AM
When rainfall is this heavy
with no vision between water,
branches reach across back roads
for miles, and green creeps down
curbs as if getting ready
to cross. Once in this gray light,
on the way to bring an attorney
my marriage, from these secretive
woods, a stag vaulted over
blacktop, then vanished into
morning. And, oh, how I ached
to go with him, but even if
there were no appointments
to keep, I was afraid to
follow into that forest
where I’d gone as a child.
Grateful that he’d flung himself
over my day, I forgot
where I was going, what secrets
went with me. By the side of the
road, I held my breath, wishing
for his wary grace—until I bent
my head to the steering wheel
and sobbed for that stag,
I suppose, and whatever else
vaults into morning.
Honorable Mention: Zilka Joseph, Auburn Hills, MI
My Love is an Ocean
of coral and kelp
yet somewhere deep inside lie
cliffs and caves unknown, where soundless creatures of the dark—
immensely old and primal live as if Time did not exist
and shadows move like mountains. I hear the
violins of their murky hearts, hear
somewhere the thunder of a Manta’s wings or
whispers of shellfish in sand.
I know so well your boat
that travels my shiny skin and makes love to my storms,
you, who have dived deep to feel my pulse, the weight of waves
crushing your bones and, trying to understand, you
explore my salt and water world. Fascination
kills your fear when my arms hold you close, your breath
rises like the bubble nets of humpbacks, and I am
sadder than their songs, my sorrow
howling long and low through the night like a whale
calling her lost calf.
Honorable Mention: Lollie Butler, Tucson, AZ
Drought Wedding
Border winds tool my veil, whipped us raw
in the mountains they call Dragoon. You gave me
poppies in your eastern way, your pockets filled
with nothing but ideals.
We planted sorghum on the surface of the moon,
revved the old Ford pickup to haul
what water could be had. Nights our bunk matted
in the shape of two fallen stars.
Single ranch against the sky, our cattle stood
still as air pockets, waiting for Monsoons to come in thrashing
like a woman in labor. The kind that survives here
are the legendary dead and those who can go a long time
without water.
Waited three years for rain—you were gone by then.
The truck rolled copper dust to the canyon rim. I climbed
toward sundown, watched the earth pull the features
of the sky close
then let go.
You can smell rain a hundred miles to Mexico,
lightening strikes straight down as though some old gunslinger’d
been quiet long enough, time to raise a little hell again.
Rain riles us when it stops; we strip,
raise our fists and shout, “Come on damn you, pour!”
The desert, hide-tough, lets water run wild
through slashed arroyos, sneers at the sky,
“I don’t need your pity, I don’t need it!”
We were young to muscle this land. Your hands were softer
than my own, still I wish you could have
seen it: Rio Pedro running
and so many Spadefoot Toads that haven’t long
to claim the muddy earth and so
are fierce about it.
