Although my preference remains with more traditional forms, it was fun to experiment in the hopes of winning a little bit of prize money.

A Fox in January

Hunger is a shape.
She wears it like fur—
tight over her ribs,
down to her paws.
The land is guttural.
She replies with motion.
Low. Fast.
Then still.

She finds her search slipping.
Flatness ambles starkly.
Even hope is a bare branch
or spare pebble.

She noses the frost.
It flinches,
saying it is mute.
A lone hare bolts.

She watches it—
not chasing,
just contemplating
her next chase.

Beneath her, the snow hums.
Steady, without melody—
just pressure.

To a Mangrove

Who can say for what you wait
With leaves leathered by scathing light,
But ripened with repentant renewal
And stretching ajar like limpid eyes enticed
By the sinewed breaths of brine and bark?
That return aching waters grown slack
As fading pools unspool cleansing silk
To bow to dawn before lifting its ilk.

Clear and coarse, the winds dash forth
To pluck your fingers like wistful lyres
As snow-clad egrets roost from the north,
Thawing in the blush of budding fires,
Perched above burrowed shells that amass
At the ebb of the horizon’s old promise.

Hear the heron’s wing splitting the bay,
Slicing once more silence in two,
Softly dispelling twilight’s somber gray
For a buoyant kingdom born anew.
As clawed creatures clamor underneath,
Stirring the silt where pied shadows seethe.

Though your feet dredge the shifting sands,
You appear unburdened, happily captive
To all that has gone and all you will grasp.

You, a lover that learns too late
That there is no leaving.
In your green sheddings you see
No purer grieving
Than to stand and bask and wait.

For which wave would betray you?
You who grieve with such stilling grace.
Each piece taken, and each retrieved
Imprints, and its remains will efface
All you have given and received.

What Sinks Below

A grebe’s beak punctures hushed tones—
Gone in a blink,
Slipping through the skin of the world,
A whim too dear to hold.

The surface quivers with this,
Like glassy lips stretched thin,
Cradling the cheeks of darting rays,
Reflecting with them.

Ringlets reach outward,
Each circle a retreading,
The pond stitching calm…
Wavering, yet sure in its bedding.

Even torrents are thwarted,
Barely brushing her tresses,
While beneath—
Where mud thickens into records—
Which all sink,
Weighted down with forgetting.