In honor of National Poetry Month, we are pleased to publish the winners of this year’s Poetry Contest, sponsored by Lowcountry Weekly in partnership with the Pat Conroy Literary Center and the Port Royal Sound Foundation. We were thrilled with the great number of entries we received! The competition was judged anonymously by a panel of published poets affiliated with the Conroy Center. Thanks go out to them and to all who entered the contest.
FIRST PLACE
‘Mother of the Marsh: Aisling’
By Jacquelyn Markham
The marsh can swallow like quicksand.
Never fear, she whispers as she rises
from the mist above the muddy marsh,
a presence out of nothingness & my dreams.
She speaks: I am the mother of the marsh.
She is dark like the earth & her scent
like the sea. She’s the spirit of the river &
flows with the tides. I am in awe, so don’t speak back;
she doesn’t mind. She has things to say
& raises her voice above the whistling wind.
My spartina grasses bind my muddy soil,
to protect you humans from the stormy seas.
I am a shelter for the terns on their long migration.
Ducks & cormorants love to stay with me & nest.
As if she senses my fear of quicksand, she warns,
stay away from my pluffmud at low tide & I will
soothe your soul with my shimmering
waters by moonlight or sunlight.
She recedes, then, into the rising mist. I breathe
her salty air & she clears away my woes.
SECOND PLACE
‘End of Summer’
By Elizabeth Bishop Later
When the summer of my life has ended and the tide is going out,
I hope that what I’m asked to do
Is perch on a dock in that glorious golden moment,
Sunburnt and full of boiled shrimp caught earlier in our own net
And, watched by a setting Lowcountry sun and maybe a heron or two,
With the smell of pluff mud and the sound of cicadas providing
background for the count of
1…..2…..3…..
Jump!
Carefree, hands up, into the creek
Where I will splash into laughter,
And friends,
And memories,
And salt water in my nose,
And the anticipation of forever days of swimming in the creek,
While complaining that one of the boys tried to hold my hand as we jumped,
But all the while secretly loving that he did.
THIRD PLACE
‘Yardwork’
By Jodi Kemp
It grieved my heart to mow that lawn:
The purple clover blooms suddenly gone,
the magenta blossoms of the shamrocks, the dandelions, too.
I spared as many as I could,
It was the best that I could do.
The green onions, and monkey grass, brought to the ground,
just so, we could comfortably walk around.
A ladybug spotted me coming,
and off she flew,
and the bees all around buzzed,
not sure what to do.
The neighbor man said–
the grass was too high.
It’d grown for too long…
It practically scraped the sky…
But all those little bugs
sure didn’t seem to mind.
Mowing, to me, doesn’t seem very kind
when you think of the all the life,
you’re laying to waste,
just to please another human’s taste.
