August 2010 Challenge Winners

Two winners were selected this month, one in which flowers are a metaphors. Lucy Lu’s poem was selected in large part because of the imagery and the flow of the couplets.

In Ann-Marie Madden Irwin’s poem, the narrator is planting daffodils. The experience of the narrator is specific and individual, but in another way, it is universal. It is not unusual to experience a sense of the presence of a loved one in a way that seems very real.

Congratulations to both of the winners.


Snow Flowers

Gathering their last strength
they flutter softly to the earth

with an infinite tenderness.
One petal, then two, then three

dotting over pines, cypresses,
aquiver with such gentle touches.

Patch by patch, crystal hexagons
unscroll a silverscape.

Is it snow that decorates April,
or April that beautifies snow?

A skittery squirrel, searching
acorns, yields no answer.

A sudden bird's call shakes
the last snowflakes from treetops.

~ Lucy Lu


Death Mask

She remembers how her face
set, the feeling of death so new
the way she felt on the inside.

Tinker, she heard it only
in her mind, something she’d be
forever and yet not ever again.

She heard her name called
as she planted daffodils
in the side garden, the bulbs

promise of trumpets come spring.
Tink! She heard her father
calling so clear she turned

from her task to see
only air, the neighbor’s red house
the pines and dogwood.

There it was, an understanding
of forever and never again in her bones
as her face set, she continued digging.

~ Ann-Marie Madden Irwin


Copyright on these poems belongs to the poets who wrote them.

Thanks to the consulting judge for August, Kathleen Gustafson.

© 2010 Wilda Morris