"Farming in New Hampshire" 2022 Poetry Contest Winners
Interpreter Reed Cotton with Ryan Twomey, Carol Lake and Kay Morgan
Missing from photo Hannah Rubin
Winning Poems "Farming 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 Poetry Winners
2019 Contest Winners
Back Row: Ala Khaki -Contest Judge, Autumn Siders- Third Place Adult Category Winner, Mary Anker- Second Place Adult Category Winner, Gabriel Smith -High School Winner
Front Row: Lotus Gregory -Elementary School Winner, Tobin Smith -Middle School Winner, Katherine Leigh -First Place Adult Category Winner
photos by Robert J Popp
