I didn't win a prize, but I did garner an honorable mention (I had sent the limit of five poems). There was also a list of honorable mentions for titles--a first in my experience. I got one of those too. So, just for the fun of it, here is the poem with the title the editors liked:
Bottom Line
Where is what is lost?
Is it absent forever?
When the blossom shatters,
when the snow melts,
when a dropped earring
can’t be found, the space
on the museum wall
now bare of the image
that haunts the lover
of art—
is there some
ledger that tells us
which lacks are less or greater?
Who would bewail the loss
of a child’s first tooth?
How long will the mournful
cow keep lowing for her absent calf?
A soldier son, an aged mother,
an elder statesman, a teenaged
driver, a deer in the headlights…
are they of equal weight in
some cosmic balance,
once they’re lost?
If at last there is no finding,
how do we achieve
the full height of our being?
Only the faithful and the brave
know the courage to deny
the mortality of what is unseen.
The latest issue of Wild Goose Poetry Review is online as of today. This is the real thing--not just poetry closely judged and well chosen, but graced with trenchant reviews as well. Scott Owens, the editor, was kind enough to print a couple of my offerings there.
Today was a good day in other ways: I got the first royalty check from Bookstogonow.com. It wouldn't buy a cup of coffee, but it proved someone bothered to download my story. And I came in second at a bridge club in which I was invited to substitute.
Maybe another day, I won't be the perennial also-ran?
1 comment:
Joan, I love your poem. I will look for more at Wild Goose.
You write so beautifully of the birds in your neighborhood. I am enjoying the woodpeckers that come to a special feeder hanging just for them. And I, too, love the mockingbirds. I have one or some in my woods and love the songs they sing.
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