Honorable Mention, July 2003 InterBoard Poetry Competition

Poetry

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Poetry

InterBoard Poetry Competition

Honorable Mention, July 2003

WHAT PANTHER...
Dennis Greene
(Atlantic Unbound)

What Panther...
What Panther stalks beneath the earth...
M. Kathryn Black

In the panther’s last moment,
when the dull earth erupts
from under the living skin,
when, in the dark of the sky
black roses grow,

raining their petals
on the dark pavement,

we will go to the zoo you and I,
to the cage of the earth
to the glassed-in enclosures,
to the drill in the jaguar’s eye
(no more cages Ted Hughes,
but the lions are yawning)
to the place where we save
what is left,

you will find if you walk
past that place,
past that heel on the floor
and the restless
turning-- past the crowd
and the look on its face,

past that vision of God
and horizons churning

my face in the glass
of your door, my face
and the glass,
and the roses coming.

Judge Claire Hero’s comment: “Though I find myself skeptical of the usefulness of the parenthetical comment, the rhythm of this poem combined with the use of repetition, the way these two elements compel us to the final crescendo, more than makes up for it.”