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Adult Poetry Contest Sponsored by
Writers Circle of Durham Region
 

  Adult First Place—Stevens Taeho Han
Willowdale, ON

Stevens is a poet, literary critic, and a Korean interpreter, working for Ganz Co.
He has published an English poem book, “A Wooden Ox Rocks Zagreb.”

Winner 1 - Certificate + $75.00 CAD

             Spider

My heart is an arroyo.
I could see a dried gully, gulch.

All the buffalo grasses turn yellow.
Only a king spider lurks in the web.

Huge white spokes of the great wheel
trill and moor in the gossamer sunlight.

His dark orb body sleeps for the next prey,
hiding his delicate spears of opportune poison.

He only stirs at an edible vibration, not thumps, blusters,
nor swing of wind, dewdrops, but flutters of white moths.

Their struggling wings sway to pull off the sticky mire,
but his stubborn eyes stare at their desperate dances.

He eloquently snakes down the gossamer lines from the heaven,
watches and waits until the preys give up for their escapes.

I, a third eye, pluck the beautiful but labyrinthine strands
to brush the dying moths out of the trap, slow but definite.

My plucking finger is my language and power, but
His swinging feet is his ideas, his transparent universe.

I stop the irrational hands to cut off the threads
when I see the spider run another stout ribbon of snare.

O I am a vast impossible shadow passing the spokes of life.
He is just rebuilding his broken Borromean chains.

I wish not to live the busy life of spider, invisible, inhalable.
There only remains a hum, a blur, or a tainted memory.

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Adult Second Place—Anu Radha Verma  - Mississauga ON

 Anu Radha Verma is a hyphenated-Canadian who grew up in the suburbs, and is delighted to find her home(s) in books, beds and street markets across the world.

 Winner 2 - Certificate + $50.00 CAD

       Tagore

night of august 14th,
one gnarled hand tightly grasps a time-piece
with only rusted components
working order (just barely),
story telling, punctuated by ticking, chiming,
reminders of
when

the night spread itself thin
exposed panoramic views
an expanse of history and hunger

and beauty that translates well,
beauty that inspires honour
a heavy colonial choker
(quickly undone after 1 day,
33 rounds per person,
the Golden Temple’s worst blemish)

and Tagore rises in the east,
chases away strokes of night
leaves legacies in countries
whose existence he could barely feel
under those Bengali digits

He beckons me near in
my unsleeping, his fingers
find their way to my quiet places,
the places truth bubbles
‘our language has been lost and forgotten’
we speak in tears and national anthems
 

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Adult Third Place—Josie Di Sciascio-Andrews  -   - Oakville, ON

Josie is a member of the Canadian Federation of Poets, the Ontario Poetry Society and WEN. She is published in the Canada Cuba Literary Alliance, University of Toronto's Comparative Literature Journal and has published published two chapbooks of poems.

 Winner 3 - Certificate + $25.00 CAD

 Nocturne

against blue darkness
tall pines
etch
ominous crystals
in the cave of night

their inverted roots
burrowing deep
shadows
in vast emptiness

north star, a pin
firm in its place
holds up the night
like a circus tent
above our town

I stand
on a velvet fold of karma
all unuttered thoughts
bouncing back
to their own source of gravity
such agile gymnasts
elastic on their trampolines
trapeze artists skimming tightropes
elephants, tigers
braving hoops of deathly flames
parades of human talent
beauties, frightening beasts
flaunting their tamed, glittered ferocities
each gift, each oddity
of the whole gawdy world
dangling
from ropes in mid air
as an audience forever gasps
to the expected drum roll
we the acrobats
with our telltale garb
our own bejewelled limbs flailing
leaping towards other hands
blindly seeking
grasping at solid objects
in the ever growing possibility
of falling without nets

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 Youth 15 - 18 Category Winners
 Teen 12 - 14 Category Winners