Market Day Beneath North Bay Mountain
Clouds have fallen again
settling in the valley
dampening cabbages and worn red barns.
Uncle is talking of mortgages and crop loss.
Auntie is staring into the chipped cup,
her wind-blown face absorbing his words
like the hail that fell last August.
But I think only
of the trip down the mountain.
We always stop for ice-cream.
` The road is narrow and potholes trip our words,
forcing us into jarred laughter.
We curve sharply into the village.
Solid rock rises on the right
as menacing as January.
Two breaths to the left the cliff
sheers downward into clear bay waters.
The adults are deep in their bartering
and whose barn roof needs fixing again.
But I am free to dream
of leaping into haystacks,
chanting to soft-horned snails,
and slipping my tongue over dripping ice-cream.
Here in this place
where people
chain their houses
to the hillsides.
First Place Category 2
FSPA State Contest 1991
Clouds have fallen again
settling in the valley
dampening cabbages and worn red barns.
Uncle is talking of mortgages and crop loss.
Auntie is staring into the chipped cup,
her wind-blown face absorbing his words
like the hail that fell last August.
But I think only
of the trip down the mountain.
We always stop for ice-cream.
` The road is narrow and potholes trip our words,
forcing us into jarred laughter.
We curve sharply into the village.
Solid rock rises on the right
as menacing as January.
Two breaths to the left the cliff
sheers downward into clear bay waters.
The adults are deep in their bartering
and whose barn roof needs fixing again.
But I am free to dream
of leaping into haystacks,
chanting to soft-horned snails,
and slipping my tongue over dripping ice-cream.
Here in this place
where people
chain their houses
to the hillsides.
First Place Category 2
FSPA State Contest 1991
| Lorraine Geiger a collection of prize-winning poems |
She Sleeps in a Three Poster Bed
She screams her mother up at six
demands a bowl of yellow number five
consumes it while swinging from the breakfast stool.
Socks are pulled onto flying feet.
Shoes; fireflies dancing in the half-lit room.
Tangled hair mimics the spaghetti in her lunch box.
Clinking off to preschool, her thermos rapping
against the plastic of her red-berry slurper,
her mind is a comet's tail, streaking the universe
creating anomalies akin to the big blast.
The car shivers down the road as her fingers press buttons.
She imagines the garage door going
up down
up down.
Fourteen three-year-olds cease morning play
as the fuchsia-suited squeal blips the room.
Miss Frumpy absorbs the interruption
prepares the square on the blackboard.
Painting fingers shame Picasso.
They jaywalk on paper, easels, and Joshua's cringing eyebrows.
Purples tattoo the room.
Lunch is the Serengeti. Red
stains her lips as orange slurps across her cheeks
Dripping onto her white collar.
Her meatball is on someone else's tray.
The car squirms its way home,
sighs up the driveway, locks its doors shut.
The house holds its breath, splutters as she enters.
Bath water escapes into the hallway.
Wriggling towels muffle giggles.
The lullaby tape is turning, turning,
soothing her mother to sleep.
Awards: 3rd Place Beta Sigma Phi 2006
Connection at Midnight
Here in the stilted light of my room I watch
my stilled shadow sitting jagged across the porch roof.
The zagged patterns of your tire tracks
Inch along the driveway toward the street,
snow drifting across them at intervals,
holding their secrets like dust on high moldings.
Here in January winter chills the staunchest wires
sending them sparking across white,
dancing their careless dance,
daring your efforts to harness their perilous canter.
The clock's hands are snow crystals encircling its face.
Twirling and turning, cold minutes drift
flake by flake piling high into hours.
The shadow on the porch roof moves in the hard silence
then disappears across my window sill.
I creep toward the bed and dim the lamp.
The telephone rings. Your voice thaws the room
curling it into the folds of the patched quilt.
The clock ticks warm like the heart of the bear
who nurses her cubs in heavy sleep.
I watch the sill fill with snow, puffed high and rounding
like the backs of bunnies hunched against winter.
Closing my eyes, I listen for your footfall on starched steps,
imagine your stiffened hands searching the warmth of our bed,
knowing that reality is somewhere on a frozen pole,
transformers buzzing, lights flickering on a darkened street.
Finally, you drift into my slumber
like the snows of midnight, melting
like hot seconds on the rim of the clock.
2nd Place FSPA
Here in the stilted light of my room I watch
my stilled shadow sitting jagged across the porch roof.
The zagged patterns of your tire tracks
Inch along the driveway toward the street,
snow drifting across them at intervals,
holding their secrets like dust on high moldings.
Here in January winter chills the staunchest wires
sending them sparking across white,
dancing their careless dance,
daring your efforts to harness their perilous canter.
The clock's hands are snow crystals encircling its face.
Twirling and turning, cold minutes drift
flake by flake piling high into hours.
The shadow on the porch roof moves in the hard silence
then disappears across my window sill.
I creep toward the bed and dim the lamp.
The telephone rings. Your voice thaws the room
curling it into the folds of the patched quilt.
The clock ticks warm like the heart of the bear
who nurses her cubs in heavy sleep.
I watch the sill fill with snow, puffed high and rounding
like the backs of bunnies hunched against winter.
Closing my eyes, I listen for your footfall on starched steps,
imagine your stiffened hands searching the warmth of our bed,
knowing that reality is somewhere on a frozen pole,
transformers buzzing, lights flickering on a darkened street.
Finally, you drift into my slumber
like the snows of midnight, melting
like hot seconds on the rim of the clock.
2nd Place FSPA
Ultralite
Floating like a dragonfly under afternoon clouds
the long fabric wings of the ultralite bend upward
like the wooden arms of a puppet beneath a painted sky
It is your first flight around the perimeter of the lake
The small motor hums urging blue wings higher
into simmering air daring the ebb and flow of invisible currents
A nestling in early flight the small plane rises and sinks
dips and turns searching for steady air
Holding you up with short breaths I watch from the shore
My shoulders sink with your dipping rise with your lifting
The sun clouds my eyes as you brush the tallest pine
and I squint you into focus
You are well above the treetops now turning at the lake's far end
Your passage is smooth and precisioned like the flight of the condor
as he circles high above the bare rocks of the fissured crag
My shoulders relax for a moment I watch your wingtips
rise and fall rise and fall in unison with my breath
Suddenly the canvas wing
spills into itself
Aluminum framing
folds into the fusilage
like the arm of the puppet
whose strings have snapped
You are plummiting wing first into the lake
There is no sound now
No hum of motor
No whirr of propeller
No rhythm for my breathing
Your plane is a limp jumble of blue skin and metal
From where I stand I can see no movement except for the fading circles
rippling toward me pushing up the wrinkled surface of the lake
Even the clouds have quieted the sun
I search the wreckage from my lonely shore
But there are only shadows upon the water
They form silently into hollows and creases
blurring into my mind like fence posts in a cold fog
One of the shadows grows tall and splits like two arms reaching
Waving waving waving at me
Pulling back my breath
Giving me back my life
1st Place FSPA 2001
Floating like a dragonfly under afternoon clouds
the long fabric wings of the ultralite bend upward
like the wooden arms of a puppet beneath a painted sky
It is your first flight around the perimeter of the lake
The small motor hums urging blue wings higher
into simmering air daring the ebb and flow of invisible currents
A nestling in early flight the small plane rises and sinks
dips and turns searching for steady air
Holding you up with short breaths I watch from the shore
My shoulders sink with your dipping rise with your lifting
The sun clouds my eyes as you brush the tallest pine
and I squint you into focus
You are well above the treetops now turning at the lake's far end
Your passage is smooth and precisioned like the flight of the condor
as he circles high above the bare rocks of the fissured crag
My shoulders relax for a moment I watch your wingtips
rise and fall rise and fall in unison with my breath
Suddenly the canvas wing
spills into itself
Aluminum framing
folds into the fusilage
like the arm of the puppet
whose strings have snapped
You are plummiting wing first into the lake
There is no sound now
No hum of motor
No whirr of propeller
No rhythm for my breathing
Your plane is a limp jumble of blue skin and metal
From where I stand I can see no movement except for the fading circles
rippling toward me pushing up the wrinkled surface of the lake
Even the clouds have quieted the sun
I search the wreckage from my lonely shore
But there are only shadows upon the water
They form silently into hollows and creases
blurring into my mind like fence posts in a cold fog
One of the shadows grows tall and splits like two arms reaching
Waving waving waving at me
Pulling back my breath
Giving me back my life
1st Place FSPA 2001
White Water Rafting on the New River Gorge
This raft is a narrow cave.
I hide in its crevices.
Around me the hills are still,
watching through ringed eyes.
The river; a white-cat devil
tormenting my bones.
Yesterday I was content
to sit in my chair
contemplating bills,
mole crickets,
middle age.
Today I scream
"I will not settle
I am not ready."
Foaming water
slips her tongue
under the churning raft
curls over its sides
to smack at my heels.
Diligently
I plow my oar into plummeting surf
lifting, spinning, plunging into turbulence.
Puma waves leap
claw at my skin and hair
secrete a surge of rapids
snatch at my courage
try to pull me in.
I will not curl like the specked leaf
drying in the last fringes of sun.
Instead, let me swirl over high mountain ridges
and follow rivers to their edges
as they leap over stones
and fall foaming on their feet.
This river,
like the ebb and flow of my days,
bewilders me.
I have climbed its arched back
and slid down its spine.
Again now, I hear its purring.
For the moment I am its kitten.
My grandchildren watch
from plastic covered photos
hidden deep in my backpack.
They are August children
They hold their summers
tight in their nests,
keep them long and perfect.
I hold my oar full against the swell
Shout to the river
"I am younger than you"
feel the cold
stalk my bones.
Rolling now, rolling
I witness eyes
larger than muscadines
faces in the mist
sometimes clear
sometimes blurred like old years.
Yesterday,
you spoke of retirement accounts
and guided tours to Europe.
I nodded
watched as clouds
shadowed the mail box
changed the calendar
from fields of Sweet William
to pumpkins.
Tonight
we will sit close to the fire’s edge
warm our tingling bones
and curl into each other
as we watch a light snow fall.
1st Place FSPA
Flight at The Top of the World
We fly over desolate marshlands
as a transient moon
swims beneath our fragile wings.
Drifting clouds swallow us incessantly
each in turn
spewing us back into the clear wilderness air.
Far off in the blackness of the Northern sky
an airport beacon flashes blue assurances.
The tundra below seems oblivious to our humming motor
and the meld of metal and minds that trails behind it.
I can feel a thousand eyes watch from the marshes below.
And always the moon
slipping across the vacillating water
then hiding itself in a rise of brush and wasteland.
Isolated in this space
where moon and earth devour inner strengths
I feel I am at the mercy mechanical wings
and unseen forces.
And I sense the urgency
in the blue light
that beacons.
First Place Category 34
NFSPS National Contest 1991
We fly over desolate marshlands
as a transient moon
swims beneath our fragile wings.
Drifting clouds swallow us incessantly
each in turn
spewing us back into the clear wilderness air.
Far off in the blackness of the Northern sky
an airport beacon flashes blue assurances.
The tundra below seems oblivious to our humming motor
and the meld of metal and minds that trails behind it.
I can feel a thousand eyes watch from the marshes below.
And always the moon
slipping across the vacillating water
then hiding itself in a rise of brush and wasteland.
Isolated in this space
where moon and earth devour inner strengths
I feel I am at the mercy mechanical wings
and unseen forces.
And I sense the urgency
in the blue light
that beacons.
First Place Category 34
NFSPS National Contest 1991
A Father Remembers
Annie exploded into our lives like an early spring freeing its secrets
bringing a flush of color to the parchment of our days.
In her zest she would come to us with her secrets
spilling them into our pinched ears,
giggling half-truths and make-belief.
Annie loved secrets.
She loved telling them, anticipating our sudden surprise.
At times she would hold her secrets in cupped hands,
tightly pressed to her lips, sometimes not giving them up for hours.
She sketched her spirit into everything.
Her suns, with yellow stick rays, smiled through crayoned eyes
as wide and blue as water reflecting a summer sky.
She brought life to the tall grasses
that swayed and bent as she leaped for sunstreams
that shred through branches like confetti.
Annie loved animals, from furry puppies in boxes
to arrogant alligators swimming across TV screens.
She painted them on easels and on crinkled paper
stroking them with pastel fingers, speaking to them in soft whispers,
filling their ears with secrets.
Annie loved her grandmother,
venturing bravely across miles of tight cities
and desperate landscapes, to spend days, a week, our lifetime.
She would carry her tiny red bag full of crayons and pictures
and secrets for Grandma.
I can feel her spirit even now, as I stand in the swaying grasses,
listening to the dirge of insects,
watching debris drift like confetti along the silent swamp.
I feel I can hear her soft whisper spill into my soul
as men in wet suits search for remnants,
and for the shrouded secrets that lie somewhere
in a small black box.
First Place
FSPA Annual Contest
Annie exploded into our lives like an early spring freeing its secrets
bringing a flush of color to the parchment of our days.
In her zest she would come to us with her secrets
spilling them into our pinched ears,
giggling half-truths and make-belief.
Annie loved secrets.
She loved telling them, anticipating our sudden surprise.
At times she would hold her secrets in cupped hands,
tightly pressed to her lips, sometimes not giving them up for hours.
She sketched her spirit into everything.
Her suns, with yellow stick rays, smiled through crayoned eyes
as wide and blue as water reflecting a summer sky.
She brought life to the tall grasses
that swayed and bent as she leaped for sunstreams
that shred through branches like confetti.
Annie loved animals, from furry puppies in boxes
to arrogant alligators swimming across TV screens.
She painted them on easels and on crinkled paper
stroking them with pastel fingers, speaking to them in soft whispers,
filling their ears with secrets.
Annie loved her grandmother,
venturing bravely across miles of tight cities
and desperate landscapes, to spend days, a week, our lifetime.
She would carry her tiny red bag full of crayons and pictures
and secrets for Grandma.
I can feel her spirit even now, as I stand in the swaying grasses,
listening to the dirge of insects,
watching debris drift like confetti along the silent swamp.
I feel I can hear her soft whisper spill into my soul
as men in wet suits search for remnants,
and for the shrouded secrets that lie somewhere
in a small black box.
First Place
FSPA Annual Contest
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