Third Place Winner, July 2003 InterBoard Poetry Competition

Poetry

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Poetry

InterBoard Poetry Competition

Third Place Winner, July 2003

YANGSHUO QUAY
Rebecca Loudon
(The Writer’s Block)

At night, my father’s boat is strung with lanterns. I give him
a basket of pears, three dumplings wrapped in paper.

He presses his thumb to the top of my head for goodbye,
enters the Li River with his flock of tethered cormorants.

They fly out on their leashes, kites flickering against limestone.
The avu swim close, attracted to the bob and sway of lanterns.

The cormorants swoop, pluck, swing the fish in pouchy beaks,
thrash against the wooden collars that circle their throats,

trying to swallow, swallow. My father reels the birds in,
pulls the fish out of their mouths.

In the morning he walks to the village and I ride my bicycle.
He laughs when I stretch my arms out, then flap,

caw and squawk, stretch my neck to one side,
then the other, like the cormorant escaping its collar.

Judge Claire Hero’s comment: “This is a quiet poem, strengthened by its clarity of image. There is a playfulness to this poem that underscores and enriches its sense of loss and nostalgia, and it is the balance of these emotions that I find compelling.”