We absolutely loved reading through your entries for our spring poetry contest. You delighted us with your creativity, humor and beautiful words. The winner of this year's contest is Brian Bindon with his entry, "Deep Spring". Second place goes to Barry Simon with "Chant" and third place to Tracey Scott with "Is This Heaven". Please enjoy their wonderful poems below. A huge thank you to Gervase Hittle for reading through the entries and selecting the winners.
"Deep Spring" by Brian Bindon
From the long disintegrated,
mute and forgotten
dust wallows of the buffalo nation
has re-risen and re-emerged
a touch of the white buffalo calf woman
wearing but a faint disguise
in Wild Idea.
The shaggy sacrificial spirit creature
of indigenous sustenance
lopes past longhorns
and calls its brother-sister creatures
to resume their wholesome lives
in the new thunder-hoof ranges.
Smiles wreath anew in the legendary
ancestral faces of Lakota heaven;
even some mild surprise, for
another part of the wound of the hoop
is healing.
"Chant" by Barry Simon
Prairie’s green blanket
becomes Bison’s copper coat
the Meadowlarks rise...
"Is This Heaven" by Tracey Scott
Yellow dust rises reluctantly in the morning sun
Small hooves kick
A Mother sighs
A early Spring frost clouds her breath
A calf is born
The Bison stand watch and shake the melting flakes of night snow from their coats
The prairie wakes with the dawn of a birth
Ancient history, hope and expectations all in that one small creature standing so unsure on new legs