Annual Contest Winning Poems: Portrait Category

Congratulations to Roberta Haar and Bill Quist for winning the annual contest in the portrait category!First Place50, todayby Roberta HaarWhat part of me is 50? What specks,particles, motes or grist over the years?Hair keeps growing molecule by moleculewhile cells replenish from time to time.Nails renewed. Even nerves and brain cells arecompletelynew. Perhaps my mitochondria with itsintra-sensory flashes or perhaps theeggs within ovaries—the potential childrenunborn. Conceivably my genetic code—those instructionsto build me—a 50-year-old planfor molecular agitation.Is my heart 50 years old? Beatingnonstop, and yet such muscle needsrevitalisation, repair, with new blood cursingthrough it containing nutrients fromthousands of animals and plants that havedied in the service of my upkeep.Are my memories 50 years old? Onlyfleeting ones that may be reconstructed fromphotographs. Is my soul 50 years old?Possibly. Yet, a pious spirit needs need rebirth from timeto time to replenish a faith.More likelymy soul has undergone transformation, a rejiggingof firmament and essence. I watcheda green darner dragonfly emerge from itsnymph on a rock near the shore today. Abirth of one life form from another. Cansouls do that too,slough off a shell, an exoskeleton andbecome shiny, glittering and new? Certainly,I feel like a closely-woven, full-souled woman butwhich soul is currently abiding within me? Isit the same life-force of 50 years ago or is itanother?It is a day of visible sunrays penetratingthrough patchy clouds. Here, Isit on a rock with birdsong and fish splash andlapping water. The breeze catchesthe cottonwood leaves like the fast drumming of keys on the lowerend of a piano. A cicada radiating pulses.I found a piece of almost perfectly square shale,all grey shades and partially fractured.I gently pried open the pieces,like unfastening a deck of cards, exposing the interior to light andair for the first time in what could bemillennia since the particles settled and werecompressed into rock. Is that what happens in a spiritualrebirth,your soul is fractured exposing it to newlight after long darkness and dense compression? Thelonger the life, the more fractured slices that are possible, in myspliced deck. Perhaps I have five slices, one for each decade, or maybe 50,the number of my birthday. My birthday,it has been minefor 50 end of summer days. My voluptuoussummer days filled with bare limbs andclear lapping water. Fifty days in which to self-deprecate, to reflect andto scribble a few words of affirmation that mark the passage of time.A time that feelslike a tactile arch—the part of me that is 50, is today. Second PlaceSonnet to Jimby Bill QuistYou were the ‘50s before Rock and Roll –Hank Williams and whiskey and black &white Maverick episodes on our old TV,a football helmet without a face guard.As I grew you devolved from idol to man.Despite your stand as tougher than leather,time did what it sometimes does to mortals:steady decline but subtle, gradual,like your ’73 black Bonneville –muscle turning to rust, Rilke’s Pantherpacing in its cage, a bone handled knifegone dull from lack of honing. Then nothingbut dust. Now you are the prairie itself:all around me nowhere to be found. Third PlaceBalder Blames Odin for a Lousy Childhoodby Bill QuistIn drunken frenzy, you andyour berserk heroes raged on,oblivious to pain, fear, and thoseof us who could not get near you.Your mead is no help here.I won’t reach Valhalla, cannotescape my fear, as Hel claims me.The beast I battle will not be tamed.What good came of your drunkenfeast? Did you conquer the universe,you, mighty Norse champion of champions-You, who could not even save your ownson, you on your flying horse, as thesea crashed over Ragnarok, and you andthe sky were swallowed by the Wolf, andlaughing, you died? Thank you to everyone who submitted to the contest! The poems were read and judged blind by Bruce Roseland. These poems will be published in the Spring 2018 publication of Pasque Petals. The other submitted poems will be considered for publication in that issue as well.Featured image by Vincent Parsons under the creative commons license on Flickr.