The amazing Dr. Jean G-Owen set and adjudicated our December competition:
For this month’s competition, write a poem (up to 30 lines) or prose poem (300 words) with Winter (not Christmas) as a theme. Set the tone to be eerie and unsettling, perhaps even uncanny, making winter itself feel sentient.
And the winners were…
First place: ‘WINTER, 1536’ by Dave Sinclair
While clouds kiss and bruise the hills with grey
A crow and worm romance in the fields below.
The worm smells juicy to the murderous crow,
A morsel to be eaten soon, unless it will obey.
The worm is hiding in the frosty sward
until the spring melts all the winter snow.
Then the secrets of the worm’s burnished glow
may be opened by the crowbeak’s rasping sword.
For now, while winter fights its white campaign
the worm shares her place with the bones of kings,
and gold or souls and other buried things.
So, crow can only caw its spiteful refrain.
The passing time will fade the snow’s pure white
then worm will curl up, smaller, smaller
and ask the Maker “Pray protect your messenger,
and hide me in another shining night,
for I have seen so many wondrous things
burnished, glimmering as I slither deep below
Save me from the scraping beaks of crows
And allow my witness to the sins of kings.”
“Mary, you have never served me true”,
Said crow as he addressed the worm,
“But as in all our lives, each season’s turn,
and all our efforts must in death conclude.
And though now you hide within the frigid turf
To each of us the winters end must come,
Yield your soul, or else your life is done,
And that will be the end to all your work”.
The worm replied, “So, Thomas, must I cast aside,
the holy love of our one true lord,
He surely knows that when I give my word,
I know different in my heart – or else I die”.
As fields submit to winter’s white campaign,
clouds kiss and bruise the hills with grey,
a queen parlays her soul for earthly pay,
while crow caws out his rasping, cruel refrain.
Second Place: ‘‘CRAVE’’ by Janey L Foster
I like to think of birds, fluffling, blinking, they keep me warm under their wings. I watch the absentminded sleet swell in and out like a thought you can’t quite grasp, almost snowing, almost here, bringing the feeling close. And how my ribcage expands into the white tiles down the street, the ice crystals drawing attention to their edge like the bones underneath my muscles and I move. I may peer into the chill because it craves me, pulls me close and if my eyes and nose run in this biting air, if my cheeks turn to rose over my wool, I will be calm.
Calm, yet bristling, feeling the blood surge around my body as though I’m still a child with hot aches in snow clumped gloves, wet wool that doesn’t care and I run out. I seek out ice, for in this winter, it defines me, this bitter biting at my edges, makes me whole. This restless buffeting, mirroring my breath, my heartbeats, the sense that I’m alive – even now.
I will wrap up and go now. I need to talk to birds. Where the dried-out leaves hang wet, releasing. I feel ravens nestle in my palms, pin pricks in my warm skin, I let them peck me, let me bleed. I offer them berries to burst in their beaks and if I pause, I feel the juice in their gullets, rolling down, sustaining them until they sing. I will walk until my skin cracks in the cold, until I feel the edges of my mouth where the wind gets in and if it snows, I will be safe, if the flakes prickle my face, burn into hot cheeks I will be known. Iced needles cut me, they take me home.
Third Place: ‘MIST OF LIFE’ by Johnathan Reid
Winter first whispers its warning
to ice-splintered hearts of pine,
unhealed from perpetual war.
Blizzard and frost sweep down
to silence bird and beast,
smother Autumn’s leaf and branch,
strangle stillborn bud-to-be,
until every forest bone
creaks and moans in
merciless frozen symphony.
Snap-crackled twigs signal
rare breaths daring to break frigid air,
each billowed cloud of life
a strike against the bitter, silent foe.
Antlers rise in regal pose,
ears of warm meat twitching
in denial of Winter’s ultimatum:
Migrate, starve — or stampede,
through snow-powdered blankets,
into lupine jowls on moonlit nights.
Ancient bowed sentinels,
mist-cloaked skeletal ghosts,
grasp dead soil in their last stand.
Blind roots claw grave-deep
into hoar-baked earth, to cradle
Spring’s few shivering survivors.
Numb stakes stab warm hearts,
until Summer-starved fur succumbs,
bright eyes dimmed to death by the
tilt and turn of cold-blooded Winter.
Our highly commended entries were;
Ghazal for the Silent by Damon L. Wakes
Winter Ways by Mary Anne Smith Sellen
Winter Demon by Val Harris
A huge congratulations to this months winners!!
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