Poetry Contest

“In Snow or Sun, Having fun! Recreation in New Hampshire”

2023 Poetry Winners

Standing L-R Dianalee Velie, Contest Coordinator, Autumn Simoneau, Sigh Language interpreter,

Melanic Chicoine, Contest judge, Cynthia Knorr, Firs Place Adult Winner, Pat Tivnan, Third Place Adult Winner

Seated L-R Brenna Manuel, Second Place Adult Winner, Miriam Talcott, Elementary School First Place Winner.

Winning Poems

Mariam Talcott 8 years old

1st place elementary school

Wishing For Snow

I whish that snow would fall,

For us all.

Soft, white, flakes of cold,

Melting, when you hold,

Now water, cold, cold, cold!

Angels, stamped to the ground,

The old ones

Snow buried, and lost,

But new ones found

Each child has made seven

Of the angels, not born in heaven.

And now complete, their sweet lullaby song,

Thinking, deciding, time to move along!

Now, the Great Winter War,

Clamping snow into balls,

One, two, three, four!

And throw some more.

Being chased,

And running in haste,

Los of laughter in the air,

cold bodies and frozen hair.

But now the sky is darkening,

And it's time to go indoors.

(Even little critters are off their fours).

It's time to sit and rest

Sipping hot cocoa,

It's the best

And, now, think back to

All we know,

About what to do

When it finally snows.

Cynthia Knorr

1st place Adult

Pantoum to the Mountains of New Hampshire

A glint of sun above the mountain peak

A piney-scented, soft-as-silk breeze blows

The door to heaven lies beneath my feet

The more I hike the more my solace grows

A piney-scented, soft-as-silk breeze flows

Up Lafayette and Lincoln, Jackson, Jefferson and Clay

Hemlock fronds above me, schist and granite underfoot

My feet rejoice in conversation with the trail

My disposition lightened by the laughing brook

Hemlock fonds above me, schist and granite underfoot

I hike away the blues that kept my spirit dim

My disposition lightened by the laughing brook

I idle by its bank and smell the painted trillium

To hike away the blues that kept my spirit dim

No greater bliss than dust at Sawyer Pond

I idle by its shore and while I throw a pebble in

I see the face of nature painted by the setting sun.

No greater place than Galehead but at dawn

To find the joy that morning light bestows

To hear the voice of nature urge her child to carry on

I hike to find the grace beneath my soles.

To find the joy that wilderness bestows

And feel the hand of nature put a glow in sallow cheeks

The more I hike the more my solace grows

A glint of sun appears above the Presidential peaks.

Brenna Manel

2nd place

A Dog Runs Here

So, to compare

the running through trees, the walking of dog,

the milking of cows or other standards of being

in living here, seeing the pines holding thick ice

for days, the cows as Shetlands, standing and curling their horns

a dog curling his tale and knowing

best how to be

the one flinging his harness, chasing the birds

across the trenches of fields, and here

one might compare the walking of dogs

where we used to live,

down the sidewalk to meet

with strangers outside cafes,

dogs who linger, some tied to living

for the one they are waiting to stand

befor them, done wih thier buiness

and ready to play

that is to compare the days and hours we spend

in rual traipsing and sloshing, in doing such singing

and dancing as we do together

is to compare our hind legs

spread out in stretches in both places

matching ourselves together in classes.

gong our separate ways in cases of luck or proximity

as animals do-now take the hound away from the city

away from the chaos, so away with pretention-

gather in chasef-a flash up the hillside

where a wolf, fox and possible lion

might sit on its hauncjhes

viewing the land, the chance of grasping a life

free in southern New Hampshire

as dog on a run

pleasing no one but his own mind.

Pat Tivnan

3rd Place

Chasing Daylight

The light was gently fading / "Just enough time to stretch our legs"

Joy exploded from eyes first then down to tail

She reached for the leash-just a necklace she wore for show

Up the trail by the old farmhouse, empty now for winter

Free range chickens blocked summer hikes

They both remembered his jaws around one-though he did spit it out

Sepia leaves, crinching loudly,

Dangerously camouflagign the holes between the stones,

Carefully she went up-Just a little more

The sun was aiming for the ridge line-Just a little more

He danced back and forth, side to side / Waiting, watching, grinning

then a decision point / One last look at the weakening sun

"Let's go the long way"

Chasing daylight

Moving quickly but mindfully / Down the slope to the woods trail

Reveling in the sweet aroma, the crazy warmth of a November day

The forest quiet and resting now

Side by side the way they have travelled / For almost a decade now

Swapping companionship, protection, joy

Chasing daylight

Turning to home just as dusk takes over

Soon to his bed by the fire-the big head drops but he still watches her

"We won" his grin says

Chasing daylight.

2022 Winning Poems "Rooted in New Hampshire"

Lambs of God

Come to the lambing pen in February

Come sit in the muck and the manure and the damp body of your mother.

Sit.

Feel her soak through your bones.

Feel your bones soak through her.

Smell the rich metallic smells of blood and shit and mold and tenderness.

Soporific sheep chew and chew and chew the dried grasses of summer grinding sunlight rain and thunder into shinney new souls.

Let the sun patch work its magic on your heart and the sleepy milk-sodden drunken lamb lips and stretchy brand new twins’ toes tickle your sadness away.

Heaven is no further than your presence.

By Carol Lake Canterbury, NH

1st Place Adult Category

First Flight

Colony stirs under starless night

Dappled snow; Spring’s delight

Cleanse and rejoice

First sight, sunlight!

Dark cold aches, from long winters plight

Bright warmth battles dark nievan night

The cluster now broken

First flight, purge flight.

Spinning, whirling, these Apis dervishes

First maple then apple and dandelion nourishes

Born of light, the blossoms now beckoning

Ancient rites beyond small human reckoning

New life emerges

First flight, brood flight

Wildflower, clover and goldenrod flourishes

Vibration of workers and queen cells piping

The workers allegiance, their dances, her fiefdom

Royalty emerges

First flight Queen’s flight.

Knotweed, bee balm spearmint and sunflower

Such promiscuous pace; Summer’s meteor shower

The swarm making haste from morning melon flower

Spiral flight dizzying, to queen’s waiting bower

Autumn light warm and amber

Trees laid bare beneath Sun’s meander

Dark time comes, the colonies slumber

Awaiting rebirth and first flight wonder.

By Ryan Twomey, Plymouth, NH

2nd Place Adult Category

Harvest at Wagon Hill Farm Community Garden

What am I to make

Of sweet potatoes

Shot through with holes

Made by wire worms

And bite marks

Left by voles

As they chomped their way

Down the row

Of how unnerved I am

To see a brown furry

Creature barely

The size of a man’s thumb

Wriggling at the top

Of my shovelful of earth

Where the sweet potato

Should rest

Of knowing I should

Not begrudge

His need to live

Should “share

And share alike”

Of feeling sudden anger

Flood me

At his destruction

Of my summer’s work

Of how I fling

The soil and destroyer

As far down the wood-chipped

Path as I can

Hope he will die

Wish I had cut him

In half with my spade

Of how I want to cry.

By Kay Morgan, Durham, NH

3rd Place Adult Category

An Ode to Eggs

Which one came first: the chicken or the egg?

I’m inclined to think it was the latter.

Each morning, as my mother knows, I beg

For eggs: I crave the sound when they splatter.

Do you like your eggs scrambled or boiled?

Avoid salmonella! Don’t eat raw dough.

Perhaps you like eggies,Benedict-ed?

Either way, chew every bite with gusto!

One large egg contains six grams of protein

And nutrients which help our bones grow strong.

They aid the healthy functions of our brains

So we can always discern right from wrong.

The egg must have come first, now can you see?

It seems our vegetarian friends agree.

By Hannah Rubin, New Castle, NH

1st Place High School Category

2021 Winning Poems "Beauty is Diversity".

Adobe Walls

I rode my horse bareback

along the dry wash. Cottonwood trees

showed the path through the hungry desert.

I felt the heat of my horse pass into me.

The breeze scratched against my face.

I traveled to an adobe village long abandoned

where walls spoke to me of people’s lives.

I heard voices echo in the dried mud.

It was a secret place, no visible road

or markers. I would slide off my horse and peer

into the past, imaging a family warming themselves

by the cook fire, harvesting their ‘three sisters’, the seeds

saved over thousands of years.

Did the Anasazi suddenly appear in Arizona? I felt their

suffering in the saguaros who witnessed their passage,

and hope in the cactus’ impossible flowers of spring.

These are the original peoples of the Americas.

I see them in clear sky and vast expanses, like a mirage.

I see them where memories are stored behind silent eyes,

ancient and wise and mysterious. They are

heritage as well as history. These Native American

footprints are our legacy.

Jennie L. Pollard

1st Place Adult Category

Elder

I am so old that my patience fondles

a future already made.

I am old enough to remember

how to seek food with my drum

and to ask butterfly of future seasons.

I remember that my senses

feel colours that are extinct

and that my skin breathes

all Time equally and seeks it here.

I am old enough to call the rocks

family, the mountains teacher.

When I sit near a tilted line

of water, I know that it is me.

To become old,

one befriends rocks, consults mountains,

honours water. One learns

to stand on the divided island some call life,

and soak peace from sky and land.

I am old enough to know I am a bystander

to the ripples of insect births

and star deaths.

I should be eroded by the shallow crimes

of hate in human history,

but I am old enough to see

that our future sings of a tail

swallowed by its mouth

as it devours its past.

And I am at peace

watching the feast, awed

by its appetite.

I am so old,

this makes me new.

aJbishop

2nd Place Adult Category

Ode to the Pleasant Lake High Trail

They were here but yesterday. Those who identified the

springs, marked the water courses, moved the rocks, built the

walls, strung the twisted wire fencing, tilled the soil, planted the

apple trees, lilies and laid their loved ones to rest.

Now we come, latter day pioneers, creating paths of

discovery, placing large flat sided rocks in enchanted wet spaces,

building rugged foot bridges over streams. We identify stones,

tress, lichens, fungi, animals and birds. We marvel as we find,

etched in rocks, initials, dates, and drill holes, iron pins and bolts

set in stone, old blaze scarred trees, marking country, town and

private property boundaries.

We come to consider this quiet drama. We sit upon thick

mossy ledges, drinking water from plastic bottles, as our gaze

follows distant ridge lines of lofty peaks. In awe we look down

into peaceful ponds.

In the stillness our forefathers gently nudge our shoulders

and, for a moment, we are together in mutual respect and

appreciation for the miracle of this place.

Debra Lamson Perkins

3rd Place Adult Category

2020 Winning Poems "Snapshots in Time"

FROZEN

The world stopped spinning

Everything was silent,

The breeze stopped blowing the trees,

And the river stopped rolling along.

Everything was silent,

Oh, so very silent And Dark.

Sophie Stachulski, Elementary School Winner

Strafford NH

Just Like That.

It’s funny how quickly a moment can go from thrilling to terrifying,

Just like that.

Laughter turns to screams

The world becomes so loud, yet so deafeningly silent.

The impact isn’t even the worst part,

But the pressure of the water overtaking my body and stealing my breath is what kills me.

I try to gasp for air

But to no avail.

Air turns to water and fills my lungs.

In my last moments I relive everything in my life up until now.

Every wrong decision

Every right one

Everything in between

Will the world miss me?

Or will I just be another unknown soul,

Gone?

Just like that.

Callie Valeri, High School Winner

New London NH

A 1987 Photo of Female Destinies

Mom, me, and my little sister, frowning. Summer vacation, road-trip.

Dad had rested the 1960’s Travco motor home, to extend its life

on the road. While we waited for it to quit its white-steam-sighing,

he brought his camera out to capture a gigantic Arizona cactus.

My little sister and I fence Mom, as directed, and stand in front of the star.

My oldest sister—absent—explores a Christian camp, 3,000 miles away,

where she’ll meet her future husband and try-on Mom’s Sunday shoes.

The star of the photo towers behind us, stiffly poking the desert sky

with its succulent-nubs, to force the rain that just won’t come.

This inside-out pincushion grows from Mom’s slumped shoulders, out

of her housewife-head, as if all of the cooking & sewing she did for us

came back in one impatient clump. Her feet swell beneath the burden

in the degree of heat that melts cheese; another reason we are not smiling.

My golden-haired sister—dressed in blue—leans close to Mom’s right side,

gazing at the concrete with her tiny-blue-eyes. Her three-inch feet

are firmly tucked together, readying her Air Force Sergeant future.

I am captured at eleven, a tanned, brunette, bean-pole; summer’s dry-gleam

a pasture in my hair. My white pants are rolled to my scuffed knees. My

white tank top hides two sore bumps, (soon-to-be trainees)—I match

Mom’s scowl. This trip, she tells me that it is about time I wear a brazier.

My left-hand rests on the back of my head, my elbow forms an arrow

pointing in the direction apposing her. Deep, in the distance between us,

on my right shoulder, a highway-sign cautions, alongside a chain-linked fence:

Do Not Enter.

By Amber Rose Crowtree

First Place Adult Category

Grafton NH

Compost Poem

A lopsided moon sends no light through the bare trees

as I stumble blindly

toward our compost bin.

One foot squishes and I jerk it back.

Someone’s cigarette smoke bullies its way

into my consciousness-a neighbor? Walker?

Undistracted, briefly stilled, I savor my small illusion

of solitude.

Joyce White, Second Place Adult Category

Farmington NH

LAST RIDE UP MEETING HOUSE HILL

No one knows

The next ride could be you

in the black hearse with the yellow fringe and tassels

draped over velvet drawn curtains

always parked in the dark end of Johnson’s barn.

In her stall, across from the hearse, Lucy

the retired black mare, waits alone.

When it’s time, she wears an ostrich plume

pulling the carriage slow and steady

with its pine casket and massive iron wheels

through the village of Sutton

up Meeting House Hill to the Old South Cemetery.

It might be Mrs. Ferry who is the next one to go.

The ninety-seven-year-old woman who lives on Barker Road

and holds the Boston Post Cane made of ebony with an engraved golden knob.

Although the last time I saw her,

she was on a step ladder painting her kitchen ceiling.

Jody Wells, Third Place Adult Category

Sutton NH

2019 Winning Poems "The Courage to Create"

The Universally Besieged

Katherine Leigh, First Place Adult

Sad assignment, that of giving birth to a sterile baby

in a barren world, all countries shaken to their cores.

Takes a certain jaded courage to saddle up with only

hope enough for the slight remainder of what was

originally a full journey.

Yet we travel, pay the hand to pass us through

borders, open gates at night to the glint of coin and

bullet over bodies of our daughters, bones of our sons.

Listening to our plight has a color;

help, a shade of grey.

Carved into me is the bravery to move by moonlight.

The ‘besieged’ talk around the potato table about a

possible rebirth of remnants of family fled from damaged

culture, in a faraway imagined-place we may, easily,

never see.

So to mold a new future, to hold onto old traditions,

to carry embers of flame, to embolden sinew under the

burden of relentless intensity.

That is each waking moment if we curl for a drift of

sleep.

We take time to thank Allah or Jesus or Quan Yin,

the ancestress energy, the generative offspring.

Believers, we bend our bodies to include moon and

sun, to reinforce as artists of our daily lives, of our

impermanence;

ourselves as stars.

cancer creations

Mary Anker -Second Place Adult

a mother recovers

her nine-year-old body

reacquaints itself

time

barely unspooling

pulls years out of seconds

bald head worn proud

trips to Boston

pilgrimages pursuing

a holy grail

courage

in a chemo chair

alien face eyebrows and lashes disappear

inside elevators

fear stands

elbow to elbow

hollow strangers

nod

eyes do the communicating

kitchen table

a studio

scissors, sayings

paint brushes, pens, journals, cards

watercolors, words

release

disbelief

love holds

after long nights

of floating blue

the sky of light

renews

I Could

Autumn Siders-Third Place-Adult

I Could I could sit and watch

as you scream and shout.

I could back away

and let you sort it out.

I could hear those words,

Muslim, illegal, fag, Jew

but pretend they are just words

not to do with me but with you.

I could go home

and just wait my turn

until your hate becomes murder

and these words boil and churn.

I could wait until

those screams turn to fists

and look on in horror

as blood fiercely mists.

I could do all this

but then am I to blame

when the headline this week

is another soul has been maimed?

I could stand up

and make my voice heard,

stand beside a fellow human

and push back your bitter words.

I could stand up

and you could stand down

and realize that differences

are what make the world go ‘round.

I could lecture you on love

but you are just so full of hate,

so instead I’ll show you love

and all it can create.

2019 Winning poems-Students

The Power of Creation

Gabriel Smith -High School

This world would most certainly cease to exist,

Had it not been for our Creation, our Genesis.

What makes us what we are is what we do,

And any idea without creation, could be quite askew.

For we are creators, in everything, and every day,

Someone had the idea, and put it into play,

From your new recipe

To a song melody

All that you can see

Was made by someone just like you or me.

Do you think Da Vinci thought his paintings

Would be famous, and fascinating?

His “Mona Lisa” is the most renowned –

Even centuries later, it still wears the crown.

From design and innovation

To the plane you ride to your vacation,

To towering cities and works of art,

From the car that won’t jumpstart,

To the curriculum that you use in school

And the tools that do the work for you,

Whatever it is you need to do,

It was made to make life easier, and you can do it, too.

You may not win a Nobel prize,

It even may be criticized,

But don’t give up, you’re not the only one,

Our work on Earth is never done.

Unconventional

Tobin Smith -Middle School

Our beautiful country has existed

For 239 years to date.

If not for groundbreaking people,

Would we be brave enough to make?

Think of Leonardo Da Vinci,

With his wonderful thoughts and dreams.

If not for people like him,

We would be in the Stone Age, it seems.

Just imagine if Wilbur and Orville

Had stuck to making bikes,

If they hadn’t wondered, hadn’t made,

Would we ever have taken flight?

Imagine if good ol’ Walt Disney had

Never decided to make cartoons.

If he hadn’t made his movies,

Would we have shows with bug buffoons?

If Thomas Jefferson, a president,

Had never taken up in arms

The clever idea to write down

The declaration of freedom from English laws?

Yes, there’s no doubt that if we

Did everything in convention

We’d never come up with the

Fantastic word of something new: INVENTION.

So let us not relinquish

The good courage to create,

And take the job to do

Things new: more importantly, MAKE.

Unique

Lotus Gregory-Elementary

The tree branches sway in the milky glow of the full moon,

Casting a dancing shadow across the moss strewn earth.

This tree was different from the others in every way.

The branches protruded at odd angles,

the trunk was covered in knots and it was many feet shorter than the others.

It's beauty resonating in the air.

Annual Poetry Contest