Estella
Lauter judged the turtle poems. She said that three of the poems kept calling
her back; those poems received first, second and third place. She also awarded
an honorable mention to the following poem:
At Braun’s Bay
Sweetheart,
I
drove to Carson Park
today,
took
the dirt road
to
Braun’s Bay.
I
parked near the
fishing
pier
and
walked back,
taking
my time.
I
found the cattails,
hunted
for
the half-submerged
log.
Do
you remember
the
day we came
upon
it?
A
whole
row
of turtles
there
sunning
themselves.
~ Deetje J. Wildes
About
this poem, the judge said, “Even though I do not know this place, the poem
works as a charming expression of how we return to places we have shared with a
loved one to confirm what we saw and felt at other stages of our lives and to
help each other to recall those experiences. It is an elegant poem.”
Lauter
awarded third place to this poem:
In The Blink of an
Eye
I
look longingly at them
shells
soaking sunrays
deep
into their soft souls
Lying
clumped on a log
while
sparkles glitter-dance
on
quiet lapping lake waves
but
my eyes fall
stricken
with harsh reality
Even
in the natural world
one
turtle has been pushed out
Cast
off to where moss
grows
thinner
and
bark cradles
his
undershell with uncertainty
As
I stand there
trunk
after trunk
of
my personal baggage
plummets
down
onto
the wooded path
This
lone turtle
slowly
sticks
his head out
a
giggled grin on his lips
and
just blinks at me
~Pamela
Larson
“This poem stays with me," reported Lauter, "because of its arc of experience. The
first stanza describes a scene in language that matches the attitude of longing
for beauty and peace, while the second describes an (unexpected?) element that
becomes apparent, and the third acknowledges the poet's consciousness that s/he
has just imposed his/her own anthropomorphic perspective on the second scene,
and s/he has the self-deprecating grace to see that the turtle's blink may tell
another story. I love the word "giggled" in the penultimate line. It
allows the turtle to speak in addition to blinking.”
Second
place goes to:
The Divided World
Winter killed affection like a blade:
Cut out the day from night, the warmth from cold,
My life from death, and left me with the shade,
The ice, the dead, and all the mist and mold.
In spring the months were here yet never here:
The thaw, the rain, the flowers, all had their day,
But I was living in another sphere
Where things are seen yet stay a glass away.
The days are numbered now into July:
The wear of winter is in full repair
And summer gives my soul, in halves, supply—
We’re getting there, like tortoise and the hare—
The intellect has raced all lean and small,
But oh, my turtle heart, it has to crawl.
~ Robert Klein Engler
Winter killed affection like a blade:
Cut out the day from night, the warmth from cold,
My life from death, and left me with the shade,
The ice, the dead, and all the mist and mold.
In spring the months were here yet never here:
The thaw, the rain, the flowers, all had their day,
But I was living in another sphere
Where things are seen yet stay a glass away.
The days are numbered now into July:
The wear of winter is in full repair
And summer gives my soul, in halves, supply—
We’re getting there, like tortoise and the hare—
The intellect has raced all lean and small,
But oh, my turtle heart, it has to crawl.
~ Robert Klein Engler
Comments from the judge: “Marilyn Taylor
has taught me to appreciate the power of the sonnet to contain and express
strong emotions, such as grief, that are otherwise difficult to convey without
going overboard, and this is a well-crafted sonnet that does exactly that good
work. I love the use of the folk tale and the turtle as metaphor for the slowly
recovering heart.
The
first place poem comes at the turtle from a different angle:
Crossing
Today I came across a
painted turtle
as I was bicycling near a
shipping canal.
He had stopped in the
middle of the trail,
head erect, all limbs
exposed, waiting.
He seemed stuck in the
moment, moving
neither forward nor
backward, trapped in time.
I thought of you, dear
father, moving across
unstable ground, gripping
your cane
and hovering for a brief
moment
before the storms set in.
~ Caroline Johnson
Estella Lauter wrote, “Here the poet
uses free verse effectively to convey both the story of coming across a turtle
as it crosses the trail and the moment of insight when the turtle's predicament
merges with that of her aging father, and then to convey the additional insight
that all three are "crossing" before the inevitable storm. For a
small poem, it carries a world view: we (both animal and human beings) are
perhaps always somewhat handicapped (by circumstance, ability, age in this
vignette) in our processes of crossing, but there is at least the possibility
that we will make it "before the storms" (which I take to be the
inevitability of death).
Congratulations to the
three winning poets. A new challenge will be posted on November 1. Maybe you
will be the next winner!
Poets retain copyright on
their own poems.
Bios:
Caroline Johnson has two poetry chapbooks, Where
the Street Ends and My Mother’s Artwork, and more than 50
poems in print. A Pushcart Prize nominee, she won the Chicago
Tribune’s Printers Row 2012 Poetry Contest. Her short stories have been
published in Rambunctious Review, Origins Journal, Naugatuck River
Review, Blast Furnace, The Chicago Tribune, New Scriptor, among
others. She is president of Poets and Patrons of Chicago and teaches
community college English. See her blog at http://jupiter-caroline.blogspot.com/.
Robert Klein Engler lives in Omaha, Nebraska and sometimes New
Orleans. Many of Robert’s poems, stories, and paintings are set in the Crescent
City. His long poem, “The Accomplishment of Metaphor and the Necessity of
Suffering,” set partially in New Orleans, is published by Headwaters Press,
Medusa, New York, 2004. He has received an Illinois Arts Council award for his
"Three Poems for Kabbalah." Link with him at Facebook.com to see
examples of his recent work. Some of Mr. Engler’s books are available at
amazon.com. He is represented by Connect Gallery at 3901 Leavenworth St, Omaha,
NE 68105.
Pamela Larson lives in Arlington
Heights, IL. Pam has been published in the Daily Herald, Karitos, Cram Poetry
Series, Journal of Modern Poetry, bottle rockets haiku journal, East on Central
and on PoetrySuperHighway.com and DagdaPublishing.com. She has won awards and
contests and has a Pushcart Prize Nomination.
Deetje J. Wildes is an enthusiastic member of Western Wisconsin Christian Writers Guild. She enjoys making music and experimenting with visual arts.
Estella Lauter was appointed
2013-2015 Poet Laureate of Door County, Wisconsin. She retired in 2004, from
teaching in the University of Wisconsin system. She leads poetry classes in the
winter program at The Clearing in Ellison Bay, Wisconsin. Her published works
include The Essential Rudder: North Channel
Poems,
Pressing a Life Together by Hand and Transfigurations: Re-imagining Remedios Varo.
©
Wilda Morris
