Late the Hour I Ask For Thee
 
Reason, beckon I to thee,
Bequeath this night your sanity.
Ensnare my wild heart to know
Order and peace, somehow lo
To challenge now these flames of fire
That feast in torrents of desire
On word, oh thought, to hope, and dream,
To desecrate this soft serene
Like flares of icy cold bestow
A stinging bitterness below.
 
Only her, pure lips of red,
An image born of fiery stead,
Yet ‘tis enough, perfection’s face,
To pierce this heart, control, encase.
Ahh, but time has kept you free
Not more than human eye can’t see.
And late the hour I ask for thee.
And late the hour I ask for thee.
Kevin Smith, NY, Bishop Grimes Jr./Sr. HS

Ice Maiden

 

In snow up to my waist I watched as he turned to trod home,
passed with choppy gait beneath the oaks that dwarfed even his frame. 
When the sled he towed disappeared into the wood, and the forest
swallowed all sound, I too, turned homeward but found
no reason or wish to continue.
 
The pasture: a soundless dome of grey sky and grey snow
that for all my clement spring days spent among these cow paths
and the peasant hosannas of hawthorn blossoms, memory could claim none of.
Snow fell, rolled off my shoulders, and then didn't.
Snow fell, and fell, and I melted into the hillside
as what washes ashore is swallowed by sand.
 
Had you not turned back?
 
Well, then…I don't know
but tomorrow, Will, if we go, walk me home.
I fear I believe too strongly that the fitful winds of time should fill
my few and wayward footprints more quickly than any snowfall,
and I can't help but give in to the unchanging snows,
as when talk tires at last of its offices
and the dark-eyed boy whose charms I swore to transcend asks
for just one kiss.
Hannah B. Lincoln, VT, Harwood Union High School

Forms of Interruption

 

We met in spacious summerland hotel-park,
the middle of a fuchsia summer.
I am in a crowd of droning bees.
You are clutching the hem of your teeshirt,
sparrowsonging a passing cat.

 

You foot the sand between your toes.
You smile at my hands braced against the fence.
This moment, as small
as ten ants in a jar, as wondrous as
a stone woman holding a clay jar of water—

 

You palmed cerulean sky as it dripped from
my hair, on your face the glow of mahogany evening.
I saw the firelight draw down your eyes to tears.

 

When you smiled at me, your face lit in verdant leafshadow,
your eyes green pebbles, your small
fingers clutching the dirt as though the wind would rend you
as a spiderweb to the hand of a passerby,
when you smiled,
the clay jar fell from my hands.
Caitlin Parker-Arnett, WA, Snohomish High School

Monhegan Lines

 

They stopped the ferry
because of ice in the bay.
They do that every year,
but this time Nora wouldn’t leave.
She has the seabirds to keep her company.
She has her island, and her out-of-tune piano.
Matthew’s been gone for fourteen years
and still she keeps his glasses by the bed,
lenses down and getting scratched,
the way he left them.
Polished, they could be as good as new
but nothing’s new here. Even the lobster buoys
get repainted and sent out to lonely tethers.
I started writing home a postcard
like the summer people do.
Even if I had someway to send it
I would have nothing to say.
We’re doing alright.
The graceful empty house
gets cold in winter. At night the slow waves
wear the beach away.
Mari Michener Oye, MA, Wellesley HS

Terra Cotta/ Growing

 

The potted cactus
In its place on the windowsill overlooking the dull streets,
Its leathery skin filmed over with lint dust and cigarette residue,
Has learned to subsist upon damp grey city light
And bright hot desert dreams.
Erica Thompson, OR, Crescent Valley High School