| InterBoard Poetry Competition | |
WELL AFTER MIDNIGHT, JULY COMES APART
Rosetta Z Stone
(Blueline Poetry Forum)
Dogs bark in the distance, crickets thrum by the door.
All the night makes free in these ramshackle rooms
every portal open to a breeze.
Moths cluster to my lamp, the guardian pine leans
toward the gate of my undoing. Here
the sky meets my sense of purpose in a storm.
Earth drinks up like these may be the last drops falling.
Tiny trees lined out among the flowers strive a root
deeper than regret, more resilient than this thin resolve.
Anything could wander in... or wander out.
A house is just a shell, a spot of shade. No protection
from what lies within, no respite from the past.
No answers for the future, only open windows,
sprung hinges, drawers yawning from their hold like beggars’ palms
Fill me! Put away your longing folded tight like linen,
closet all your fears. These floors creak as if the very boards
were aching for release, pulling nails to rise, swing high
above my primal grasping, paint the sky
with a flailing one could almost take for wings.
Judge Claire Hero’s comment: “In the second stanza the author writes ‘the sky meets my sense of purpose,’ and this idea of seeking a purpose, a meaning, in a natural environment, is, of course, an idea which has a long history in poetry. What I like about the way this poem tackles the subject is its reliance on similes, its knowledge that any comparison, any attempt to make meaning, will only be partial -- a comparison, not a transference of meaning. The title of the poem suggests this breakdown nicely. The speaker is earnestly looking to find some meaning in the landscape of July, and yet the project erodes as soon as it is begun.”
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