InterBoard Poetry Competition

ASH
      Claire Brown Bower
      (Poets.org)

I expected something
like snow, perhaps--
soft flakes lulled slowly aloft
to float, crystalline,

and light soundless
among the dead
and the living, settle tender
atop the silver, leafy laurels
and shimmering branches
of the birch, its curling
winter coat clutching
delicate-cold to the edge
of the rocky ridge.

I knew there would be
no moisture, nothing wet to hold
anything together.

Logic told me that.

Still, somehow I expected snow--
a brilliant blanket.

But just
as the heavy lid lifted,
wind's bitter roar
dipped and drew you--
powdery, grey--
to disappear
above my gasp and high
into the great gap
of the Red River Gorge.

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Judge Susan Kelly-DeWitt's comment: “The understated tone of this poem makes its emotional impact all the greater.”

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About the InterBoard Poetry Competition
Archive of IBPC Winners
2nd Place Winner, February 2002

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