Adult 1st Place Winner

“Untitled” by Joannah L. Whitney 

If there were a telescope
if I knew the night sky, if I were
beyond the nodding acquaintance
of “Yes, it is dark” and more the translator
of scattered pricks of light
knowing their patterns this time of year
or any, beyond the dippers,
turning confusion into a map of time
the epic of old light, beginning
when this place on which I stand
was ice bound—thick. I think, breathing winter’s
night air cold into my lungs,
of this massive bridge of light
between my eyes tonight
and Andromeda as it was
when its spark began to travel
how fortuitous that I stand here
in an inch of snow
looking up

Adult 2nd Place Winner

“Sky lets down to dark…” by Eric Malone

Sky lets down to dark 
Bog oak, smoke in the troposphere, bare 
Alders in river meadow shallows 
Where darting salamanders hunt dragonfly larvae 
Under burst crimson anthers shedding pollen 
On the edges of dense green sedge. The interstate vibrates

Through mizzling rain, and fog 
Condenses into streams. Pools of light show 
Pollution on the floodplain. A sheen of spider lines Marks the boundary
between traffic noise and woodland sounds. “You could hear the snow,
dripping and falling 
Into the deer’s mouth.” 

Sheer feldspar, near distances, and hollow ground. 
Stars align with glow worms at the roadside. 
The moon’s an inverted pyramid on Barton’s Cove. Fluttering Katydids, and
creatures with eyes out on stalks, attract 
Low-flying nighthawks. Along a passing sight line, the constellation Taurus, set
perfectly to scale above a clearing in a pine grove.

 

Adult Finalist

“Moonlight Ride” by Scott Barrows

Half past eleven.
All the house asleep.
I sneak out the side door,
coast my bike down the dark driveway,
pedal out of the woods
into the full moonlight.

The night is still.
Quiet except for the crickets
chirping in the late summer hay.
Chicory and Queen Anne’s Lace
have grown tall along the dry gravel shoulders of the road.

Cruising on the flats,
I roll past the Cartwright cemetery.
The moon illuminates
white marble tombstones
as if beams of eerie light
were shining back
from beyond the grave.

On down the road.
Over the hilltop.
I ride the mile
to the Peters’ barn,
hide my bike behind the pricker bushes.

The barn sits abandoned.
Dilapidated yet proud.
Like a border castle
left to the ghosts of a greater age.

I know the barn by heart.
My dangerous teenage refuge.
I slip through the open drive bay,
cross the haymow to the trap door,
feel my way down the steep stair
to the dairy below.

Past the stanchions,
a narrow door leads outside
beneath the concrete silo
built against the barn’s westward eave.

I jump to grab
the first steel rung
cast into the concrete,
and scramble onto the silo ladder.

Halfway up
a rush of fear
focuses my grip.
I climb on,
hand over hand,
foot over foot,
up on top of the silo.

Sitting on the domed lid.
Midnight by now.
A breeze picks up.
I pull a soft pack of Camels
from my shirt pocket,
light a cigarette with a paper match
cupped in my hands.

Smoking,
I gaze out at the moonlit hayfields.

Stonewalls.
Maple hedgerows.
The rolling hills beyond the West River Bridge.
Under the wild sky.
Clouds flashing black and white
past the moon.

My head abuzz.
Overwhelmed with nicotine
And the wondrous night,
I long to be grown up.

A man at liberty in the world.
Steering the wheel as I wish.
No sneaking.
No hiding.
But driving.
Across the bridge.
Over the hills.
Out of New England.
Into the West.

There the memory fades.
But now,
thirty years later;
I still hear the crickets.
See the glowing gravestones.
Feel the steel silo rungs.
Taste the freedom
fresh in my young mind.
And as much as that boy wished to be me,
I long to be him again.
Riding in the moonlight.
Sitting atop the silo.
Overwhelmed with nicotine
And the wondrous night.