Winning Poems in the Summer School Poetry Contest

The following are selections from the works submitted by the first, second, and third place winners in the Summer School Poetry Contest.

First Place Davenport Plumer

NEW HOUSES

The field my son and I were walking in

Snicked with broken corn stalks

And taller, stalky weeds.

Our shoes were powdered brown

with dust spooring from the leaves and twigs.

We walked beneath the reining sun

That burned the field

And made us squint

Like snow-wise esquimo,

Toward the new white house

We were investigating.

We were walking from my son's school

(Where a music festival had made us restless).

When he entered in the fall,

Men were harvesting corn

where the new house stood.

Later they bulldozed off the rich corn-feeding layer,

And the dense spoor-fine dust

Swirled across the school, powdering every child.

And still in May the flattened space

(too dead to be a field) behind the new houses

Looked ruined--as by a retreating army.

What must have been bulldozer tracks

Looked more like

The crossing, circling prints left

One rank and sweating Plistoscine

Evening as male and female, mailed and plated

Reptiles circled in a dance of mating,

Or two bulls horned and splattered each other's doomed blood.

Across this cross-tracked waste,

Across the cracked plated of clay,

The exposed skeleton of glacial stones and sand and

The few cigar-shaped stubs of corn,

We walked toward the house.

Shadeless, it swam in the sun-swept field

In the currents and eddys of dust and heat.

Its cellar windows are empty, eyeless

Perhaps blown in by whatever monster

Skinned and gouged in the field.

The wires for the door bell hung in a way

That pictured London and Cologne

When all the walls hung with shreds of pipe and wire.

Squinting into white-x'd windows

We circled the house, deciding, finally

That we liked the cellar best,

A dark mushroomy hole that gave

Back a ghostly echo

when we yelled and whistled in

The eyeless windows.

On three sides the loam

was pushed against the house

In long, surf-like crests.

On the back side, two mine-made holes were blown

Just large enough to hide my son

As he swept the dusty field

With his machine gun.

He called to me from the hole he warred in:

"Is our house built on an old farm too?"

"Yes," I said, pulling him from the hole,

"Many houses are."

"It's too bad they have to knock the farm down."

"Yes, but some just fall by themselves."

"Well, I won't knock down any farms to build my house."

"We'll see," I said, starting back toward the school.

* * *

. . . the house I lived in as a boy

was small and white--across the road

from my grandfather's farm: a low

dark house, a dozen saddle-backed

sheds and coops and a huge red-gray barn

that leaned both in and out

held up and pulled down by honeysuckle

and stitched at top and bottom by pigeons and dogs.

. . . the house I lived in was newer

by one hundred years than the barn

and both of them have been churned

under, and new houses

seeded in their places,

and I suppose that's a comfort

against the awful fact of death.

Second Place Anne Winters

FLOODMARKS To R.G.G.

i

Love from your tall house in the hills

Highest above the bay

You walked down once by the glittering tide

The full noon of the day

You turned to me where you stood on the shore

Among your men and smiled

I laid my hand against my cheek

And stared back like a child

Your eyes, their harsh green light-your hair

Blown back in dark gold strands

Were the emerald drench of ocean

The sun's fist on the sands

Strong winds and hours of afternoon

Had slept on your arms and hands

That had the hot and silky look

Of amber from far lands

When sunset brought your fleet back in

You stood in the bow at case

When the first ship crossed the tidal swell

Between the great shafts of light that fell

To the floor of the darkening seas

I loved you; I went back to my room

To wait until you came.

Turning from the hearth, I met

A gaze of greengold flame.

And the kiss of your mouth--I saw you smile

As the fire leapt in the grate--

Then all my body's length along

I felt your living weight.

Endlessly onto our bed

We fell through the ebbing night

And slept until my window curtains

Shook with gusts of light.

Your eyes still closed, you held me in sleep

Smiling, unaware.

I swore my love. And felt your hands

Tremble in my hair.

So swore the netted mackerel

And felt the haul-ropes pull

So swore in the hair of the hurricane

The blind and baffled gull.

ii

Cold end of night where the smoky light

Whirls on the tide-ribbed sand. . .

Above the mist a gull's faint crying

Confounds the sea and land.

I stood by the tangled drift-nets;

The bride-bells searched me down

Uncoiling through the silver mist

Their long, uneven sound.

The thin tide pleated at my heels

My hair blew in the spray--

When driftwood bumped my legs, I turned.

My eyes were cold and grey.

Like seaglass as they say, that shows

No light or time of day,

Night's weather kept me for a time

Where memory blackened noon;

I roomed above the shrunken tides

Beneath an iron moon.

For our waters winter in the northern

Dusk in a glittering ring

Which when they melt run south to swell

The terrible tides of spring

To the marshes, the hills, the highest houses

Where night winds cry and toss. . .

In the night, love, does your wife lament?

Or is she at its end content,

Unwary of her loss?

There were mornings I would not comb

My hair, because of the places

Your kisses had touched it. Time lacked, I knew:

I lived on such light traces.

Master of marshes, of the pale rimmed

Sea-border and violent gulf

Of the ocean meadows beyond, and of

My village, and myself--

The carved seagate is white with ice

And lifts for us no more;

Now dolphins stitch the silver wave

Fast to the darkened shore.

Where the boatman, though the flood is in

Stands leaning on his oar.

Third Place - Worth Long

SAFARI

COME with me

on a safari

into the teeming

jungle darkness

of a black soul

searching jor

itself

trek with me

thru these vast

congos

arkansas alabama

mississippi

can you follow me

DEALER

SIGN in a

mississippi

junkyard

we

buy

burnt

bodies

SINNER MAN

A big man

God

with a big stick

Death

tought me how

to pray

RESTITUTION

GIVE me my chance

not dreams not hope

but land for bread

to fill my emptiness

and i shall live

and grow

and try

without the land

we die

MOON MAKER

DON'T pity me

because my skin

is black

i weaved the

moon

and taught it

how to fly

and lit the

sun

and hung it

in the sky

to pity you

STRANGE LOVE

A dark cloud

hovers over

my picnic

ground

TEARS OF DARKNESS

ALONE

in my

lonely room

dark raindrops

fall

and bathe

this wretched

hemisphere

with caustic

tenderness

NIGHT*

NO walls

no ceiling

no roof

no floor

no door

*

QUESTION

WHERE am i

in our

history books

i built the

ark that

saved you

from the sun

and nursed

your babes

with black

milk laughter

everywhere

so where

am i

oh where

am i

ANSWER

THERE i am

behind the plow

laughing

crying

dying

there am i

BLACK MAJESTY

A no named nothing

all unknown

walks this earth

with me alone

is it santa claus

Black i; could be

holy trinity

black i: hardly

destiny

black i: maybe

or is it me

black i: well i'll be

Mel