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The 2007 Thomas Merton Prize for Poetry of the Sacred
Coleman Barks, Judge
Winning Poem
Voicemaster #700008, 8mm
by Laurie Klein of Deer Park, Washington
Praise be the slot carved
between windpipe and food-pipe,
designed to restore a gunner's
voice: though not the one slapped
into song at birth; the one naming
pets his father brought home
(the rescue dogs, and once, a colt); and
not the voice signaling
comrades - the last shout of all,
trapped among radio waves
still circling the earth like planes.
Extol ye the scalpel
re-sectioning hyoid
bone, the tracheal rings
and gaps, complex as Saturn's,
hidden from all save
the surgeon's eyes. (Shots, mindlessly
fired, replay under ether: again, the riders
of ponies, their mothers weeping.)
Now, let there be sutures
and suitable mysteries performed
anew on the shaved skin
of an Adam's apple.
And after the healing,
bless the ball valve
of Teflon, the cunning
titanium sleeve, the clinician
with languid fingers extending
wholeness, the shout
dreaming its echo. O Maestro,
ready a psalm, clear as gel,
easing the way for insertion,
a wand, waved by a hand. And
lo, the colors glow within:
like red, to gauge
the plunger's position;
yellow, to prove the prosthesis
locks on, its delicate
star-shaped flange
elongating
slowly
into a spindle, the voiceless
awaiting alleluias,
outshining the garden beyond
and this fearful gift:
green, the device and its user,
fully stretched, breathing in…
Honorable Mention Award
White Hen
by Lorraine Healy of Freeland, Washington
This is what the old woman has done
for the last three years: soak sun
with a white hen on her lap. There can't be a
bigger measure of contentment, sun on the face,
white hen on lap. After scores of years
selling antiques and old cars, breeding poodles,
after the long bout with life's small tasks,
there are these happy years of backyard
and sun. And on her lap, the white hen.
Then, one day, the hen is gone. A reason
untrivial like the need for stew, a lone
fox, the neighbor's dog. Somebody ought to tell
the old woman the news. Around her chair,
half-grown chicks peck feed, oblivious to the sun.
Somebody needs to deal with the sad path
of bright white feathers. How the old
untether suddenly, the warm weight
of morning no longer enough. How they go
fast, like a flash of white, after
the feathery roundness of what they've loved.
Honorable Mention Award
In a Garden of Ten Thousand Flowers
by Sylvia Forges-Ryan of North Haven, Connecticut
We try to believe
the wide shawl
of the black
night sky
is stitched
with infinite
care and design.
We want to feel
in a garden of ten
thousand flowers
one life
means something
or anything
at all.
Some have found joy
in visions grand
as a celestial rose
or humble as heaven
in the palm of a hand.
But why this need
to explain
the Mystery
of all that is?
Is it not enough
and more
to leave it all
unmetaphored?
To simply name
and let it
be.
As here
in this patch
of violets, in this stone,
and in the encompassing
silence.
Honorable Mention Award
Of Feathers, Of Flight
by Adele Kenny of Fanwood, New Jersey
The branches were wide, right for climbing
and easy, even for me - an aviary tree filled with
children and birds in Mrs. Levine's backyard.
That spring, a baby jay fell from its nest, and
we took it to Mrs. Levine, intending to return it.
But the mother, she said, would know our hands
and refuse to take the baby back. How we
cursed our fingers in the name of that
small breast and breath, cradled it in cotton,
answered its cries for eyedropper food. How we
prayed that the mouth would become a beak,
the feather-stalks, wings, and they did.
The day we freed it, it beat, a heart-clock
wound and sprung in Ruth Levine's old hand,
and, finally, finding the sky, flew higher than
all the briars strung like metal barbs over
the backyard fence - higher than the redbud,
a speck of updraft ash and gone.
Heaven, fuller then for one small bird, spread
its blue wing over us and the tree and Mrs. Levine
who, breathing deeply, raised her arm to the light
and moved her thumb over each fingertip as if
she could feel to the ends of her skin the
miracle edge of freedom, of feathers, of flight.
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