ESSEX POETRY FESTIVAL COMPETITION 2009

Highly commended
Laura Solomon, New Zealand

Pythia Gets the Blues

God, why do I always have to tell you the truth?

High on snake fumes, eyes rolled back in my head,
Head full of fire, prophesy flaming on my tongue,
You consult me on everything from
The personal to the political.

Imagine the responsibility!
What if I get it wrong?
You expect my advice
Before going to war, before founding colonies,
Before planting your fields,
Before proposing to your beloved.

And what do I get in return?
A kick in the head if I'm lucky.

And all those eyes, watching, always watching.
Too many of them, trained on me.

Lying that I'm living beneath my dignity.
I did not ask for it - you put me here.

Take them then, these words,
Burning spheres in my hands.

Fires flicker and die in my eyes.

Highly commended
Frank McDonald, Falkirk, Scotland

The Sparrow's Fall

When like the spider waiting on the web
You know the intricate dependencies …. Howard Nemerov, The Dependencies

Do I use them well, moments I have shared
with creatures that dined with me? Not Kodiac bears
or pangolins, dugongs or dinosaurs -
nothing exotic, only a common bird
bathing in spite of me, heedless of men,
heedless of morning moving into night,
picking at life, its spotted plumage wet
from a puddle newly made. I search in vain
for sounds that would bridge the silent gulf between
starling and man, but it suffices to feel
our mutual awareness, to sit still
in perfect harmony, thankful for the thin
covering of trust. She knows I won't intrude
on her ablutions, and my laissez-faire
adds to the sum of things, so that we share
a wordless pact we've vaguely understood.
God notes the sparrow's fall, believers say,
but in our garden we can sit at ease
blind to the triumphs and the tragedies
breaking around us. In a curious way,
minutiae change the world beyond our seeing;
the mole erecting mountains in the soil
or the spider by the window lost in the toil
of weaving death - these things affect our being
infinitesimally. Still I stare
ignorant of surprises that are waiting
a starling's cry away. Here am I sitting
watching a one-act play in open air.
How can I know in what mysterious way
my friendship blossoms in the starling's breast
so that, in time, it might confide my trust
to birds a million years beyond my day?

Highly commended
Brian Docherty, Crouch End, London

Crime of Passion
they will pick up serpents, and if they drink
any deadly thing, it will not hurt them: (Mark 16, vs 18)

Pastor Frank's wife has heard this so often
it has worn smooth as the snakes he uses
in his act every night. That is her thought on it -
an act - for the benefit of his audience, or him.

She is the welcome sister to those that turn
away temptation, come twice on Sundays
to the tin-roofed hut out in the woods
where the Word of the Lord is strong.

She made him build a box to hold the timber
rattlers & other snakes he catches a night,
and put the drinking poison on the highest shelf.
she is not ready to be tested just yet.

She has seen miraculous recoveries from bites
& poisonings, but is feeling his enthusiasm
too strenuous, mislikes his attitude to funerals,
does not believe they were all backsliders,

She wants the head of her home to be home,
say Grace over her table, not some Deacon's
as guest preacher. She wants the plain word, nothing else,
hankers after the Baptist church on Main St.

She minds Paul on womens' position in Church,
how this squares with the First Amendment.
Her conscience is her own, not his property.
She has woodcraft too, will put this to Sunday dinner.