1st Prize - Linda Parsons Marion - Knoxville, TN

Bringing the Outside In

This rainy morning our friend comes bearing gifts--
begonias for my shade garden, forbidden doughnuts
with sugar tops and still-hot middles.  How sweet
his oblivion, this man with a houseful of sons,
shedding fall's first leaves across the kitchen floor.
I'm dying to make a clean sweep of it, put my hands
on the broom and the outside in its place.

The undertow of childhood tugs hard, for my mother
allowed no one to dispute her word, not even dust.
Our shoes, spit-shined, tub spic and span--the way
to her heart paved with elbow grease.  She scrubbed
down walls as offending as memory itself: school dresses
the firehall collected for the needy, passed sister
to sister; the father who tripped on his empties,
cursing the dark and a houseful of girls.

What rage we pass on like hand-me-downs,
surely as tallness or flat feet.  Somewhere in the vein
of blood's beginning is my grandfather and his breath
of brown fruit, bristled chin on a daughter's arm
as she breaks loose and runs.  There, too, my mother
who tries to sweep, sweep it under the rug;
the child I was once upon a time, eager face
hung in the mirror of my patent leathers.

This morning, with the season's mosaic tracked in,
the clutter of family and years piles up. Little by little
I let some of the outside in, leave a picture askew,
admire milky strands in the overhang. How sweet
the pattern I leave for a moment, before I recover
the reds and golds, and whisk it gone.

  Award of Excellence  -  Frank Jamison - Knoxville, TN

Feet to the Fire
        God is the fire my feet are held to
                --Charles Wright in Ars Poetica II

And I wonder what is the reason for this
            turning toward God.

Who started this constant business anyway?

Adam and Eve
            certainly were part of the story line,
            but only bit players providing
a light introduction to the whole first scene

Meanwhile I sit in the audience,
            a little uneasy in the uncomfortable seats
            wondering
if I"ll be startled when the real action begins,

all those battles and clashes against walls,
            the stones tumbling down and the crowds
            roaring as they charge over the rubble
like thunder up the mountain

as lightning and rain pour up river toward my window
            so I can see only a little ways out,
like looking backward to childhood

seeing only what I can remember,
            most of it, not all of it,
            not all the sources,
forces, that brought me toward God

First Baptist Church, Jackson, Tennessee...

a little hell fire and brimstone spread over the Sunbeams,
            sweet children singing, and sweet light slanting
            down from the stained glass
sweet Jesus high in the balcony

Tommy Hall and I not bothered at all
            by the implications,
            ignoring them in fact
in favor of thumbing the Hymnal

counting who authored the most,
            Fanny J. Crosby or P.P. Bliss
 I can't remember

Yet more than a half century later I still come, as the old song goes,
            "down to the river to pray," studying about the good old way
            admitting I don't know the answers
though something keeps holding my feet to the fire.

Award of Excellence  -  Sarah Small  

Inheritance

        We came into it all
without breaking glass, or lifting
of veil, or a grandmother's cameo
ring. No family heirlooms

in our first rented house; instead
we depended on thrift store endtables,
a lamp, a couch. We wished

for chipped dishes that told
a great-aunt's rich history
of struggle and survival.
        We were lonely,

without a background, without cabbage
or latkes or black-eyed peas.
        We ease into it

year by year. I learn to quilt,
meticulously stitching
my initials in a corner; he builds a cradle,
a stool, a wooden horse.  We resurrect

dead relatives through our children,
naming them John and Alice and Henry,
and record each birth in a fat
white Bible. They are the first

to grace its tissue-thin pages,
though my handwriting lacks
the necessary elegance, the gentle curves
of a practiced pen.
        The house we choose
is old: we strip, paint, varnish,
smooth, and fill its rooms

with other people's antiques. Tiny white
christening gowns and newspaper
clippings sleep in the cedar
chest at the foot of our bed.  We bring

       in the new year with cranberry punch
and oyster stew.  In my tin-plated kitchen
I bake bread, kneading dough
with floured fingers, releasing
yeast quietly as air
between every crevice
of the house, filling the children with its heavy scent.

The Scottish Society of  Knoxville Award for a Poem Reflecting Celtic Heritage   -  Doris Ivie - Knoxville, TN

Musings on Iona

Sheep's sorrel sways above the White Strand of the Monks
cheerful as today's rare sun which renders each quartz pebble
a diamond, each baroque shell a pearl.  St. Columba's currah
could have wafted anywhere, but it washed up on this bare beach
on Whitsun Eve, guided by that God who sent him here to teach,
to ignite sacred fires,t o season Hebridean ritual with the blood of Christ.
Here the real "faith of my fathers" cossets me, lost lamb at last retrieved.

Atop Dun Bhuirg the power of my people anchors me, assures me
I will win any battle I choose--and bids me choose them wisely.
Like Duncan I have been "carried to Colmekill," which bids me rest.
Here all the rituals my soul has ever known mingle and flourish,
Here where the Book of Kells was penned I am impelled to write.
Scratch this rock, a thought crops up, and Druids will again dance
with Christians, all harking together to the music of Fingal's Cave. 

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