First Place

The Lioness
By Stuart M. Anderson,
Seattle, Washington

Day on the savannah is an inheld breath
between the brief, cool pants of dawn and dusk,
a tawny silence aching to be broken
by any sharp sound.

I watch from a small shade.

The giraffes browse among the treetops,
within the rustling shadows of their leaves,
in the high communion only they know.

The antelope graze on the turf,
in the broad light and rippling distance;
what psalm the grass sings, only they know.

The giraffes have their patient gods in the treetops,
and the antelope theirs in the turf;
always and everywhere they are with them,
but the faint scent of mine comes to me
from some far place I do not know,

fleeing, and always further.

Once, I was a young hunter, and my worship was swift!
and once –
for one brief, exalted leap –
I had my teeth in the lean flank of heaven,
but I couldn’t bring it down.
 

 

Honorable Mention

Myself As Tree: A Prayer
By Tim Myers
Santa Clara, California

Adonai,
give me life then kill me if you must,

only let it be
that like a tree I live, a planted thing,
knowing the ground deep and deeper,
drinking up world through roots I send down,
water drawn from soil and darkness—

let the season-round ring by ring increase me—

when sun comes, let my leaves flutter
each with its own small luster—

let autumn-release fling my numberless seeds
outward on winds
as shifting and sure as Hope—

and when my sap fails at last,
come Thou, Axman,
lay me down, fell me hard
(I’ll murmur Your name all the while),

stand over me gripping the ax of Death
and split me with Your hands
(the right I call Making, the left Unmaking),

let the blade bite, let it jump into
my drying white interior,
oh Unspeakable, shape me, plane me—

make me a Door.

 

Ritual
By Erica Romkema
Le Mars, Iowa

What made her come back
was the sound of the waves.

Long summer days, she
spread her grief out on the sand.

Sometimes, the sun burned it
into a tired, smoldering stranger.

Other times she studied every
grain by grain, to know the heft

and shape and sum, one beside
another.  Always, she ended by

wading in the shallows, like some
penitent seeking forgiveness,

yet without white-clad choirs or
inspired clichés. No: only water

murmuring its doctrine, slow,
dark, soft against her skin.

 

Seeds
By Alfred Nicol
Newburyport, Massachusetts

Summers at the zoo in Baltimore
the elephants are given watermelons.
Pleasure goes rippling through their tough hides.
You see it.  Elephants are obvious.
They’re made to traipse about savannas where
they trumpet their good spirits like rotund
and rosy husbands crooning in the shower.
The melons are so cool and green, they love them.
They wrap their trunks around them, raise them up
and smash then on the hard-packed earth.
You’d need an Africa to house such gladness then—
they bring the pieces to their mouths; they slurp them;
they eat up everything, the rinds and all.

There is a saying: The eating of a melon 
will produce a thousand good works. So
these elephants have got it in them now
to build a Taj Mahal. They’re keen to start
transporting heavy stones.  All for love
they store up reservoirs of dawns. It’s possible
to work for days, shining from within.
Illustrious projects stem from their delight.
The harvest moon is nascent in the seed;
the tendrilled sun is folded there.  And though
the elephant is called Behemoth, he too
emerges from delight, big with the sun
he carries in his great heart.  The same one,
that hard, bright seed of Africa—that sun,
the sun that draws the melon from the vine.