First Place Winner, May 2001 InterBoard Poetry Competition

Poetry

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Poetry

InterBoard Poetry Competition

First Place Winner, May 2001

FOR BRIAN
Ken Ashworth
(Melic RoundTable)

If they had bundled you home
in blue flannel, crepe paper
draped from the walls,
your shrill cry filling
the room with balloons,

moon-faced; ratcheting the air
like an upturned beetle,
fat and white as a thumb
left too long in water,

and trundled you into
the bed next to me,
I would have been afraid.

The nurse tapped her watch,
covered your eyes with a towel
and blotted your toes.

All I ever knew of you
was a name tattooed
on a stretch of vellum,
and one black footprint
stepping off the page.

Judge Harvey Stanbrough's comment: “The poet's ability to express unbridled emotion using only relatively short lines vaulted this poem to hurdle to first place. The poem rings with a sad stillness, a stilted silence that brings tears to the eyes and a small emptiness to the stomach.”