Poetry Challenge Winner - July 2013

Photo © Gail Goepfert

Beached

The cannonball jellyfish

swept ashore

on that stretch of chiseled

shore, clustered shell—

I took photographs,

each vulnerable

angle tempted me more

than the last.

The gelatinous glob,

bell, mucus, oral arms,

dying, a mole

on the sand’s silky flesh—

until the insides evaporate,

until gulls fly in to poke,

I need no photographs

to view nor recordings

of the ocean’s quelling waves

of orchestrated dying 

to rouse in me that scene

that few but nature

take in stride.

~ Gail Goepfert

Gail Goepfert retains copyright of this poem.

Gail Goepfert is a Midwest teacher, poet, and nature photographer.  She is published in a number of anthologies and journals including Avocet, Off Channel, After Hours, Caesura, Florida English, Poetic License Press, Examined Life Journal and online at Brevity Poetry Review, Emerge Literary Journal, Blue Hour Magazine and Bolts of Silk.  Two of her poems rode a PACE bus in a Highland Park, Illinois, annual Poetry That Moves contest, and she was a runner-up for Journal of Modern Poetry and Mississippi Valley Poetry Contest. Currently, she serves as an associate editor for Chicago-based Rhino.

Thank you to thee judge for July, Judy Kolosso. She was the 2012 winner of the Wisconsin Writers' Jade Ring for poetry and is co-editor of the Wisconsin Poets' Calendar 2014. Her most recent publication is in the premiere issue of Midwest Prairie Review. She has published two collections of poetry, Aubade, and In the First Place.

© Wilda Morris 2013.