Ekphrastic Poetry Contest Winners – Part 4
EKPHRASTIC POETRY CONTEST WINNERS – Part 4
The poems published today were inspired by “Landscape of four Seasons” by Unkoku Togan, at the San Antonio Museum of Art.
ADULT WINNERS
Haiku for Landscape of Four Seasons
By Veronica Morrison
We are waiting out
the unrelenting greyness
of a somber year.
After Unkoku Togan’s “Landscape of Four Seasons”
By Mark Heinlein
High above the village in the depths of the depthless mountain range, spring
Has been swallowed up. And the handful of days fisted in our pockets, scatters
Like the last oak leaves as stiff gusts tear through their naked branches.
Deep in unseen crevices, the nightingale sings its spring song but can barely
Be heard. And the dirt-colored swallows that feed at the bird feeder scare
When the cardinals come. (Are they my dead parents come from far away?)
Death and war are the junket and vessel of calamitous governments.
How many suffer, collapse from the heat and drought of the shifting
Season? Blameless, innocents cross the borders helpless with crumpled maps
Of their old lives. O illimitable hope, O unseen wonder, come back, guide us
Through the steep mountain pass safely. On the other side, breathless
From the tenuous riprap winding into the clouds, there will be time to rest.
Looking back, I had no idea the journey would be so brief. Looking back,
how small the world is below.
YOUTH WINNERS
Ever Changing
By Ariana Chaudhary
All they could see from their frigid, raven-feathered boats,
Were the silken strands of shaded water, and their eyes dusted
With the milky breeze carrying them softly, a mother to child.
Children of the earth, children of the sun, she sang. Welcome home.
Though towering over their curious figures, she reached out a hand-
Slender fingers with chipped nails, rough yet warm with autumn’s sun-faded embers.
They created a rain-kissed stream of houses, one with summer’s golden-flaked wind –
They passed through the gentle-eyed giants, following the fluted harmonies
To a hidden palace, pampered with spring’s persimmons and fermenting wild rice.
But now as seasons rise and wane, perhaps the giants don’t stand as tall –
Perhaps the musk wind carries her leaves in a new direction _
Perhaps the children’s hearts have changed _
Yet if all remained static, when could the buds of life ever bloom?
Landscape of Four Seasons
By Isabel Brown
When dawn has arisen,
The Lively bark whisper
And the leaves
Huddle me with grace.
With luck, we move forward –
With disharmony
Come streams of tears
The fish swim along
And the boats graze across.
Memory
By Pia Nathani
Waiting on the dock
No place to call home
Just my travels and I
All alone
The clouds in the sky
The wind in my hair
I look at the village
And just stare
Relaxed with the breeze
And the mountains so tall
The boats coming in
A memory I can’t recall