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| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | POETRY PROGRAM | | | |
Poetry Contest Winner
When we opened our Poetry Contest to Alaskan residents to solicit a winning poem expressing the Congress theme, we had no idea what a wave of interesting poems would flow into our office. The selection committee was literally asked to judge the unjudgeable.
Naturally, some of the poems were more appropriate to the Congress theme than others. From among 9 final choices-which will also be printed in the published proceedings of the 8th WWC-we chose Marybeth Holleman's "And the Geese Redeem Me". We print it below.AND THE GEESE REDEEM ME
They waft in, from up and down the greenbelt
which is nothing more than
a small stream running through a big city,
water far from clear,
brambled banks contained by an asphalt bikepath,
graveled playgrounds, baseball fields, parking lots.
Yet all this week,
at the dark end of dusk,
I’ve walked to where the stream widens into a lagoon,
just to watch them arrive:
waves of Canada geese,
from the manicured lawns of
the oil company complex,
the city golf course,
and thousands upon thousands of yards,
to settle here, on this quiet lens,
appearing with a crescendo of trumpeting calls,
big wings and wide webbed feet angled for the landing,
hovering
over power lines and buildings and down, down onto this circle,
alighting
effortlessly onto this small space amidst an ocean of concrete,
gliding
feather to feather, a thousand or more, on the transformed water,
this one act of redemption each evening,
until ice edges the lagoon and they wing south. - Marybeth Holleman
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