Sarah Michaels

Sarah Michaels, First Place, High School Division

Grade 12, Home School, Carter Lake, Iowa

Teacher, Sondra Michaels

Stephanie A. Marcellus

Stephanie A. Marcellus, First Place, Adult Division

Laurel, Nebraska

 Dance out the Night

I never heard the morning break with drums,

And trumpets blasting o'er the world's edge.

It always came with slow and steady thrums

From harps and flutes over my window ledge.

The dawn smells not of attics and old furs,

Or deep, dark woods or sunny open fields.

It has a drifting scent that softly stirs

The roses--smells of dew and sleep and still.

And sunrise isn't rough or course or stiff;

It slides over my hands, chiffon and silk.

It doesn't taste of salt or food that's rich--

It tastes of cinnamon, bread and sweet milk.

An orchestra of color, scents of light,

The daybreak sings and dances out the night.

 These Bold Things

These bold things gather against life's seasons.

Bittersweet and climbing the tests come back

results complete with madness and reason

as walnuts in green shells face frost's attack.

Hospital smells lurk in my wildest veins

frost flowers next to capillaries

huddle temporal as the autumn rains.

From your face I would smooth the deep quarries

from the gold hearted trees extract balm first.

Mask the strands of gray hair with asters wild.

Lengthen the days of the wood vine's red thirst.

Temper winter's chill with summer winds mild.

Procure the sweetened elixir to reap

these bold things that across your age do creep.

Chanelle M A Yah, Second Place,

High School Division

Grade 9, Millard North High School

Teacher, Jan Amidon

Ode to Orchestra Class

The orchestra is truly fun to me.

It gives me chances to express myself.

It's like creating mus'cal poetry,

So I can place convention on the shelf.

My bow, my strings, and I a trinity,

That touches audiences when we play,

Presenting them our perfect harmony,

And showing what we've practiced day by day.

I need not have the skills to paint and draw,

For when I play I'm making my own art,

Which paints a picture that deserves much awe,

So ev'ry note and rest will have a part.

Emotions, how I feel, are then set free,

Unique, divine, and representing me.

Laura Dunn, Second Place, Adult Division

Missoula, Montana

Finding Innisfree

Midnight on Bus Eirann, the driver croons

along to John Denver in smoothest brogue,

I lean against the glass, pressing against the cold

outside the towns and in the purple gloom.

On grey roadways porch lights make many moons

As town to town his voice, the bus, they roll

and hum "O babe I hate to go."  Two worlds

splinter in my driver's port-polished tune.

At daybreak we reach coast and Innisfree,

a tale the poet wrote for movement,

a song my Charon sings as night meets dawn.

No cabin stands, no song of honeybees

and sea foam.  Here in the silence, I long

to hear the lake take up the driver's song.

Reilly Jorgensen, Third Place, High School Division

Grade 9, Millard North High School

Teacher, Jan Amidon

When I recall the years

When I recall the years that have gone by

The tears well up as I endure the pain.

My pleasant mask is torn so I can't hide

The memories I've lost and can't regain.

I never thought I'd ever get the call

That told me my life would be flipped around.

It took me time to grasp the final fall

Before I saw my life turn upside down.

I never had my chance to say goodbye

Or make it clear how much I truly cared.

The sudden shock has left me asking why

Now since you're gone I'll miss the times we've shared.

There hasn't been a night I haven't cried

I can't erase the day my best friend died.

Judy Lorenzen, Third Place, Adult Division

Central City, Nebraska

Forget Me Not 

Forget me not as leaves begin to turn,

their golden browns and reds, time's withering hues.

Forget me not when in your breast doth burn,

a longing for the buds of spring, first new.

Forget me not when winter's ices freeze

chilled breath across the land, a heart grown cold.

Brances turned bare on landscape's dying trees,

and winter's snows, so monstrous do come bold.

Stand, stand with me through season's songs of change;

still love me with the beauty of each birth,

be steadfast as the evergreen, so strange

that stands unaltered by these times of earth.

   The sound throughout the hills, and valley low,

    to a broken heart the echo heard was no.

Andrew Maher, Honorable Mention, High School Division

Grade 12, Papillion-LaVista High School

Teacher, Mary Birky

Summer's End

Lying amont the amber blades of grass,

To gaze and be lost in the Heavens blue.

The Mother's breath, a token of the past,

Witness to no finer shade of azure.

Beneath the twisted frame of Old Oak tall,

With weathered limb and gnarled face of rust,

An ancient relic to answer the call,

Keeps guard o'er bones of fathers turned to dust.

Past to present, transformation profound,

Entangled in mem'ries from life long past.

Like chimes in the wind, a ringing voice sounds,

Of girl with em'rald eyes and golden splash.

As a reminder of all that is right,

I drift away in the soft fading light.

Edward McFadden, Honorable Mention, Adult Division

Sharp Relief

How I love this "wild urban ecotone"

where feral dogs piss on designer tuff

and visions of a red-eyed goat sucker erupt

volcanic over Polynesian Gabled homes

where reason cowers behind gates alone

without care for the fetid homeless slough

contained within their cardboard condo bluff

but in slippers quietly retreats to beauty foam.

But who am I to love what's not my own?

the open air, the frost, the killer bees

the glass rich starlight sidewalk heaves

the blond Spaniards pulling Tastee cones.

No, give me shampooed streets, the cozy now

a picnic in the Elysian Hills with General Tsao.