Judge Tony Barnstone’s comments: “I enjoyed the gorgeous language, ‘Stones shawl / themselves with shade,’ the folding of night’s remnants, and the archetypal imagery of the poem—the baseball mitt crucified to the elm tree, the hammer buried in the sandbox. The domestic narrative seems transparent at first—the father crucifies the mitt to the tree because he wants the boy to work, do his chores, though it’s Saturday, not a work day, and this dynamic of work against play is conceptually rhymed against the broken swing dangling from the elm (it would take work to fix the swing, but why fix the swing, if the swing is for play?) Still, I’m not quite sure why the hammer is buried in the sandbox. I’m glad it is, though. It seems that this is a poem whose logic might be more magical than rational. Perhaps I am attracted to the fact that the poem makes sense to me without quite making sense?”