Continuing in this series, here are the adult winners in the 2021 Poet’s Seat Poetry Contest conducted by the Greenfield Public Library. The contest, which drew 275 entries, was open to all residents, as well as students of Franklin County schools.
The adult winners are: first place, After All by Lynne Pledger; second place, North Hadley, by Sharon Dunn; and third place, Day 348 by Gary Greene. Their poems appear below.
The co-winners for the Age 12-14 Youth Group: Maggie Provencal and Lillianna Inman. The co-winners for the Age 15-18 Youth Group: Malia Hanes and Ehtan Chase. Their poems appeared in publication earlier.
Her ashes came by UPS. The small bag
was a remnant of my mother’s life
that I could hold in my hands.
The bag was warm, having sat
all morning on the porch in the sun.
I clasped it to my chest and wandered
into the field toward the long rows
of strawberries. They’d yielded so many
berries that we’d had extra to sell.
Mom had left no request regarding
her remains, but would surely like
the idea of enriching a cash crop.
I pictured her smile.
Once I saw a photo of a woman
in France, purported to be 120,
her bronzed skin deeply creased.
She looked spare – but strong,
like an ancient tree that was far
beyond fruitfulness, branching
toward heaven.
I was told that Mom’s ashes might
be coarse, like gravel, and I braced
myself for pieces of bone. Maybe
a tooth. But when I arrived
at the strawberries and opened
the bag, they were ashes after all.
Bending, I poured them along
the row, moving quickly then,
shaken by their whiteness
against the earth.
—Lynne Pledger
I Passing Through North Hadley
God is Still Speaking says the red banner
on the steepled church with peeling paint.
So I listen. He has punched a hole
in the cloud ceiling, and radiance sings
on a distant hill. His conversation
includes rusted tractors, roof-caved sheds
and bony cattle nibbling in a side yard.
He is silent on the hip of the village cop
idling in his car for a speeder. He speaks
the tones of frost on the fields, of tree limbs
cracked in the October storm, of water
whispering from the pond to its lower stream.
The road curves its broad S, then
the electric sign:
Speed Limit: 30
Your Speed: 28
II Tobacco Barn in Early Winter
On both sides of the emptied barn
tall slats slant open to the air.
I see through to the fields beyond
still snowless, looking like columns of gold.
The barn is breathing, I am breathing.
Gone, the long tobacco leaves hung
and dried, and the vacant barn
sings when the wind blows in.
III Mid-December, Fields
Jailbirds in fluorescent orange vests
drag snow fencing across the stubble fields
not far from their white bus
lettered in front: TRIAL COURT.
Released into the crisp air, they erect
a line of wooden staves to protect
the country road from snowdrifts
so we can make our way unhindered.
Across the road hundreds of Canada geese
forage a vast field. All winter they fly
over us in their ragged V’s, north, south,
east, west, honking, compasses awry.
We are all lost. We make our way
through drifts, along country roads,
through dilemmas, passion,
sin or into unknown cities.
I am the prisoner glad for sun on my face,
waiting another chance. A long-necked bird
eyeing kernels of corn. A woman driving,
who needs a new way from here to there.
IV At Winter’s End
The men park their truck
farther up on West Street.
Hundreds of tin buckets
rest one inside the other
on the truck bed. You can see
where the men have already been,
buckets attached to all the maples
behind them. They tap a spigot
into each trunk and suspend a bucket
to catch the clear sap
just beginning to flow.
Oh, tap into me, let my sap
drop clear, watery, to the bucket
of spring, ready for the fire
of the sugar house,
steam escaping the chimney
in ten-foot plumes,
sap boiling down
to thick amber syrup,
so sweet.
— Sharon Dunn
December 14th will always be the day
Roald Amundsen bested Robert F. Scott
by reaching the South Pole first
and the date Eugene Cernan became
the last pedestrian on the moon (so far.)
On day 348 of 1650
scullery maid Anne Greene,
unjustly presumed guilty of infanticide,
was hanged at Oxford Castle, England,
before being revived
at her dissection the next day,
to live on another nine years.
The Montgolfier’s — remarquablement! —
tested the first unmanned balloon in 1782,
while a mere 158 years later,
plutonium was isolated.
Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe,
who would lose much of his nose
at twenty in a drunken duel over math,
was born on December 14th, 1546,
and just 472 years later,
to the day,
you died.
I can just picture you,
first to arrive at your funeral,
radioactive with excitement,
embarking on your own adventure,
floating past the moon
with your new friend Anne
to join Tycho among the stars
and go nosing about the universe.
— Gary Greene