The judge for the December Poetry Challenge, Jim Lambert, said “What a great subject to
use as a prompt. Bells can be sad, tolling the dead, and ecstatic, tolling in
the New Year, the new marriage, the new life.” He added that the winning poem
by Steve Klepetar “captures that interesting dichotomy.”
Here is that poem:
Bells
Bells
over the wide bay, a call on waves
for
boats longing in the river’s mouth,
for
glass-green shadows when tide ebbs.
Bells
calling me to water’s edge, where
my
journey begins with a day of waiting and rain.
Bells
along cliffs with swirling birds. My mother’s
bells
rung for the last time, her tiny voice
scraping
against sand. My father’s bells
with
their chests of brass and their fists gripping
frequencies,
those braided ropes of sound.
How
fine to hear bells on a day ground
into
powdery blue, a day of compounds and magic
and
flood. Oh bells, calling me home, calling
me to
mud and frogs. How sound gathers and swells,
filling
me with your tongue, or a meal from your hands.
~ Steve
Klepetar
Congratulations
to Steve. Remember he owns this poem, so please do not copy and distribute it
without his concent.
Thank
you to everyone who entered the December Poetry Challenge. I enjoyed reading
all the poems after I sent them – without names – to the judge.
Bios:
Steve Klepetar’s work has appeared
widely, and several of his poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and
Best of the Net. Recent collections include My Son Writes a Report on the
Warsaw Ghetto (Flutter Press) and Return of the Bride of Frankenstein
(Kind of a Hurricane Press).
Jim Lambert is retired and lives
in Southern Illinois with his wife of 50 years and two desert tortoises.
He is vice president of the Illinois State Poetry Society and past president of
the Southern Illinois Writers Guild.
Come back to this website early next month to see the
January Poetry Challenge. Happy New Year, everyone, and keep reading and
writing poetry.
©
2015
