International Poetry Competition
Grand Prize Winner: 2002
Mid-
by Jeff Worley
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Relax!
Home Pond
I remember the time that my father….
No. Enough of that. Enough of him.
I’ll write, instead, about these first fat flakes
of snow on my window, tiny gyroscopes
that crash-
beads that gravity strings down.
The snow was deeper back then, my father
would say, if I’d let him into this poem.
New students have moved in next door
with their loud, interplanetary music.
I can’t help but watch the one dark-
watering plants in her underwear, but then
Dad comes, making his rounds in my blood
with the story again of the Abilene drive-
Does this thing come with an instruction booklet?
he said to his high school sweetheart after 10 minutes
of fumbling with the clasp under her sweater….
Now, there’s a snowburst so relentless it can’t help
but become my father’s pure fury at the end:
Where’s my ice water? Where’s my cane? I want
out of here! I acquiesce, sit with him here in my study.
He pours us a JD Black on the rocks. The snow stops.
The fire burns down into us as I tuck away,
for the night, the fatherless poem.
Poetry Contest