2008 Student Poetry Award

Because I did not rise terrific
in steel mornings––red feet
                        over the side of the bed, yesterday––
feeling throned on a beach
is tyrannical. I do not have the stomach for raw
waves, seagulls like funny men
leaving.
               I did not grow up on skyscrapers
with perfect view of little women
                                                        and smog below,
consoling, inescapable.

Sitting with birds,
I watch boys make trenches, own
the earth, and scream
                          in flashes, sky through a mountain
of tunnels.
                  Sometimes whistling is useless
and they drown, or else
swim themselves into a love of drowning.
White goes
                  softly towards desire––
to want it, forever,
waving.

It isn't that I don't go home;
I just often catch a turn of wind,
                  shriveling away, second thought
from seeing ashes in fire pits below
trembling,
never uplifted,
                         which is home,
already gone, momentous
like abalone shining on some black
seabed, outlasting.
             The moment after a seagull calls I think
                         of colossal reconciling, sweeping
cathedral organ now wholly
                         devastated with a red-coated cavalier
calling on angels.

                              Who knows of temperament?
To feel a grave like a sandpiper wading, to cheer
softly when old men make it
                                               up the stairs––
gargantuan resurrection, boasts of the green river,
                           lovely wit!
Can you sense the plight of dallying leaflets, lily pads?
Are you injured?
Are you in love?

Given that I project broadly, over
            nuances gorged with forgotten fruit dripping
in feverish this is this, that is that
woman skirting the damsel,
                           the lonely orator,
                                        the sweet loose leaf
hovering above her,
befitting,
                              laps divinely at insignificance,
goldcrest on a snowy sapling.