New*

2006 Merit Award
By James R. Regier

Dreams invading hearts changed by storms,
being repaired by a newborn’s glance.
Struggling against a force we all know is true.
Souls crushed, giving up, realizing
we have become aware of an unexplainable joy.

*Copyright 2006 by James R. Regier. This poem is included in POETRY WALK: Sue C. Boynton Poetry Contest – The First Five Years. Info: Book! Placard design by Egress Studio.

Love—*

By Kristi Felbinger
2008 Merit Award

looks like
water color splashed on paper,
just two cows in a field,
cold hands.
sounds like
a dog in the bushes at midnight,
the pop of kelp under-toe
heart beat.
smells like
hollowed out redwood trees,
two kinds of hairspray,
onion breath.

*Copyright 2008 by Kristi Felbinger. This poem is included in POETRY WALK: Sue C. Boynton Poetry Contest – The First Five Years. Info: Book! Placard design by Egress Studio.

Rain Words*

2009 Merit Award
By Angela Belcaster

Rain on the grey of galvanized tin,
rain on the roofs, rain in the basements, moss
rooting into our shoulders the shaded side
toss salt for good luck and look down:
it becomes sea before it hits the ground.

Rain on the cemetery so much
that things long settled shift. Terse rain.
Kryptonite rain, Rain with a half-life
of ten thousand years. Notched rain.
Rain we cannot speak.

The itch of our rain hairshirts; rancorous rain,
we knew, all along, that we have conjured
all       this       rain.

Rain sonata dampened notes, rain on the Pleiades.
Rain in hell, rain nails on barn windows,
rain for dinner again; a cloudburst over our tables.

And just when we think we’ve become it,
And just when we think we know
our watery, weakened hearts, we look down:
Rain,
An entire epistemology in a puddle at our feet.
Untouched amid, still blurry
something new and green is rising.

*Copyright 2009 by Angela Belcaster. This poem is included in POETRY WALK: Sue C. Boynton Poetry Contest – The First Five Years. Info: Book! Placard design by Egress Studio.

Wood*

2010 Merit Award
By Keajn Wardrop-Peterson, 5th Grade

*Poem copyright 2010 by Keajn Wardrop-Peterson. This poem, which also appears here, is included in POETRY WALK: Sue C. Boynton Poetry Contest – The First Five Years. Info: Book! Placard design by Egress Studio.

what the poets say

“Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat.” Robert Frost

In This Place*

2006 Walk Award
In This Place*
By Barbara Davis-Pyles

I was born of flesh and bone —
a traveling bit of clay
with a jagged little soul.
Over the years
of rough times
and hard weather,
I’ve been worn both
out and down.
And how I’ve lamented my losses.
When all this time
I was simply being
wrought,
pressed,
and shined to a high polish
until
I was a perfect fit
in this time
in this place
next to your jagged little soul
now smooth.

*Copyright 2006 by Barbara Davis-Pyles. This poem is included in POETRY WALK: Sue C. Boynton Poetry Contest – The First Five Years. Info: Book! Placard design by Egress Studio.

The Moon*

2009 Merit Award
The Moon*
By Madeline Bowler, Kindergarten

The Moon sits on the sky.
Looks down at the Kids Playing
Before they go in.

*Copyright 2009 by Madeline Bowler. This poem is included in POETRY WALK: Sue C. Boynton Poetry Contest – The First Five Years. Info: Book! Placard design by Egress Studio.

On Fire*

2007 Walk Award
On Fire*
By Jeffrey Klausman

If you want to know diversity, a friend of mine said,
go to New York City. So I boarded a plane and rode
the golden wings of Delta all the way to JFK

and rode the E train in from Jamaica Center—
two black girls, smooth-skinned, glistening hair,
glossy lips and eyes and bangles of jewelry everywhere;

a Russian family, sausage-white, scared and harried,
stroller and kid in each arm; block-jawed Italian man,
five-foot nothin’, leather jacket, scarred face. I rose

to the whir of lights, the human foam of 42nd Street
and Times Square—what noise, what a jangle of sights!—
the jostling crowd swept up the Avenue of the Americas

all the way to Central Park and back again. Later,
in my hotel room, not far from the World Trade Center—
where the walls came tumbling down—I lay awake,

nerve-jangled, and listened to the honks of the city,
watched the lights of taxis crawl across the ceiling,
and felt the whole surge of the earth beneath me,

all the world’s people in all the world’s tongues,
rising, clambering up some impossible peak of desire
with a desperate and reckless energy.

*Copyright 2007 by Jeffrey Klausman. This poem is included in POETRY WALK: Sue C. Boynton Poetry Contest – The First Five Years. Info: Book! Placard design by Egress Studio.

Of Mist and Keramos*

2008 Merit Award
Of Mist and Keramos*
By M. E. Eastman

No conscious vow apprenticed him
To a potter’s calloused hands
But rather love of virtues lost
In ages e’er he knew these lands.
There’s sadness in this common thought
That ancient art might save a man
From certain urban death.

It’s only hope omnipotent
That sends him to the hallowed broc
To gather up the Tao of clay
From womb of mist and mother rock
By touch he prays a tactile faith,
A work of dreams no age can mock
The elemental heart.

Of earth and water, fire and air
To essences he rests distilled
And meanings within meanings shrine
The potter as the claywork wills.
The chaos of the kiln refines
Both clay and soul, man and skill
With incandescent kiss.

*Copyright 2008 by M. E. Eastman. This poem is included in POETRY WALK: Sue C. Boynton Poetry Contest – The First Five Years. Info: Book! Placard design by Egress Studio.

Last Will and Testament*

2006 Merit Award
Last Will and Testament*
By Greg Hoffenbacker

Angel,
when i die
drop my tears
into the ocean
scatter my laughter
on the wind
pour my love
into a rain cloud
bury my memories
beneath an oak tree
whisper my dreams
to the stars
lay my body
on a mountaintop
take my spirit
to the light
please, Angel
take me home

*Copyright 2006 by Greg Hoffenbacker. This poem is included in POETRY WALK: Sue C. Boynton Poetry Contest – The First Five Years. Info: Book! Placard design by Egress Studio.