November in the Northwest*

2006 Walk Award
By Jeanne Yeasting

The sky has come unplugged,
the wind rasping like an angry saw.
Four days, the same listless shade of gray.
Who knows how long this storm will last,
the shore dulled with driftwood and rotting
kelp. I weary of these beige walls,
my sheet-strewn bed, these cluttered shelves.
No one to wipe away the mind’s haze,
only the rain, the rain, erasing itself with ease.

*Copyright 2006 by Jeanne Yeasting. This poem appears in POETRY WALK: Sue C. Boynton Poetry Contest – The First Five Years. Placard design by Egress Studio.

Bellingham*

2011 Walk Award
By Rachel Mehl

*Copyright 2011 by Rachel Mehl. Read the poem here: Bellingham. Placard design by Egress Studio.

January View*

2011 Merit Award

By Linda Conroy

January View

From my window, naked trees
crossing branches weaving high
dripping rain on dipping bough.

Red and grey and brown and amber.
Blacker bark and lighter limb.
Green cedars hanging silent now

with not a wisp or lick of wind.
Ferns still flourish, fronds spread wide.
Wet brushwood lies on sodden ground

where mud from last year’s leaves
surrounds bare saplings, rising in the air,
but not a bird sings anywhere.

*Copyright 2011 by Linda Conroy. Placard design by Egress Studio.

Bellingham*

2011 Walk Award
By Rachel Mehl

Bellingham

Today I’ll wake up late,
drink too much coffee,
eat leftover shepherd’s pie
with mustard and soy sauce.
I’ll monitor the sump pump
and keep an eye on the chickens
while the rain drowns
bugs and muddies our lawn
seeping through the basement floor,
ankle deep. Adding to the black
mud of last month’s snow melt.
At the top of the hill my ancestors
are buried across from the wrought iron
fence of the Jewish cemetery.
It’s been long enough their bones
have jelled and thickened the lake
my father swam in as a boy,
where we still get our drinking water.
After their wedding my parents
raced up that hill. My father eddied
around headstones past the grey-faced
angel and the woman with two broken arms
who still leans forward like a zombie,
The man I live with shoots zombies on the TV.
If I drink enough wine my liver will turn grey.

*Copyright 2011 by Rachel Mehl. Photo by Karee Wardrop.

we are the mole people*

By Mitchell Morrison
2010 Merit Award

*Copyright 2010 by Mitchell Morrison. This poem, which can also be read here, appears in POETRY WALK: Sue C. Boynton Poetry Contest – The First Five Years. Info: Book! Placard design by Egress Studio.

Place Value*

By Scott Stodola
2006 Walk Award

This morning I will teach them arithmetic.
I will have numbers
and processes in my mind.
It will seem simple
but it will not be because
today is the first rain
after many dry days
and we will all be outside,
even in our seats.
Reconstituting and relaxing notions
of seasons going and coming
will seep in around the problems of numeration.
The showers are tentative
but the whole sky is again cool gray
and we will revel in it all because
this is where we live and who we are.
Perhaps today we will learn much
about place value.

*Copyright 2006 by Scott Stodola. This poem is included in POETRY WALK: Sue C. Boynton Poetry Contest – The First Five Years. Info: Book! Placard design by Egress Studio.

November in the Northwest*

2006 Walk Award
By Jeanne Yeasting

The sky has come unplugged,
the wind rasping like an angry saw.
Four days, the same listless shade of gray.
Who knows how long this storm will last,
the shore dulled with driftwood and rotting
kelp. I weary of these beige walls,
my sheet-strewn bed, these cluttered shelves.
No one to wipe away the mind’s haze,
only the rain, the rain, erasing itself with ease.

*Copyright 2006 by Jeanne Yeasting. This poem appears in POETRY WALK: Sue C. Boynton Poetry Contest – The First Five Years. Info: Book! Placard design by Egress Studio.

Rain Words*

2009 Merit Award
By Angela Belcaster

Rain on the grey of galvanized tin,
rain on the roofs, rain in the basements, moss
rooting into our shoulders the shaded side
toss salt for good luck and look down:
it becomes sea before it hits the ground.

Rain on the cemetery so much
that things long settled shift. Terse rain.
Kryptonite rain, Rain with a half-life
of ten thousand years. Notched rain.
Rain we cannot speak.

The itch of our rain hairshirts; rancorous rain,
we knew, all along, that we have conjured
all       this       rain.

Rain sonata dampened notes, rain on the Pleiades.
Rain in hell, rain nails on barn windows,
rain for dinner again; a cloudburst over our tables.

And just when we think we’ve become it,
And just when we think we know
our watery, weakened hearts, we look down:
Rain,
An entire epistemology in a puddle at our feet.
Untouched amid, still blurry
something new and green is rising.

*Copyright 2009 by Angela Belcaster. This poem is included in POETRY WALK: Sue C. Boynton Poetry Contest – The First Five Years. Info: Book! Placard design by Egress Studio.

we are the mole people*

2010 Merit Award
we are the mole people
By Mitchell Morrison

we are the mole people
rising out from under
the round mounds of winter

listening keenly
half-believing
the sun warming our bodies
we hold something back
waiting,
for the frost
and if not the frost,
for the rain
always the implacable rain

the children are playing out on henry street
calling out, yea, shrieking out
some punctuated welcome to spring
we sit disbelieving
sodden,
our dark blood eyes
casualties of the rain,
always the rain,

we are the mole people
we push the wet earth out in front of us.

*Copyright 2010 by Mitchell Morrison. This poem appears in POETRY WALK: Sue C. Boynton Poetry Contest – The First Five Years. Info: Book!