Spirit First announces 2011 Poetry Contest Winners
Spirit First is pleased to announce the winners of the second annual Spirit First Meditation Poetry Contest. An amazing total of 1,022 entries arrived from 44 states in the United States, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and 26 other nations worldwide. And now, here are our 2011 winners and their poems:
Levi Noe is awarded first place for his poem "Om." Levi is a native Coloradan and a graduate of Metropolitan State College of Denver with a Bachelor's Degree in English and a concentration in writing. Currently he is a teacher of children ages 1 1/2 to 6 years at Montessori Academy of Colorado, but beginning in May 2011 he will be an English teacher in Japan with English Academy of Communication. Levi's free time is spent reading, writing, bicycling, snowboarding, cooking, eating, learning, unlearning and drinking in life. His current and future goals include, but are not limited to, the fields of writing, education, healing, freeing, and empowering.
Second-place honors go to Mankh (Walter E. Harris III) for his poem "This Is the Somewhere You Wanted To Get To." Mankh is a writer, small press publisher, and Turtle Islander who lives in Suffolk County, New York. His most recent book of poems is Adam Had No Earthly Navel. Mankh takes pleasure in nature and enjoys listening to music, learning about various spiritual traditions, and keeping up with world news and cultural trends. His literary website: www.allbook-books.com
Third-place honors go to Kaveri Patel for her poem "Forgiveness." Kaveri is a practicing family physician in northern California. In her seven years of practice, she has found that compassionate listening is perhaps more important than the exact medical diagnosis. Her own healing journey has taught her that kindness is key to meeting all difficulties in life. She especially loves to empower women and help them reconnect with the sacred feminine within.
Kaveri has written for MotherVerse, Passing It On, and the Palo Alto/Menlo Park Parents Newsletter. She enjoys writing both poetry and prose as a means of connecting with self and the world around her. Kaveri lives with her beautiful husband, daughter, and mother in northern California. In her free times she enjoys mindfulness meditation, yoga, singing, music, the ocean, and spending time with her family.
Frank James Davis has sold dozens of love poems to various magazines under his own name and as well under two pseudonyms. He has had several short humor pieces published in Reader's Digest, The Saturday Evening Post, and Catholic Digest. Frank James has been writing poetry intensively for the past two years and sporadically for the past ten. Mr. Davis entered this current dream on September 29, 1942, is father to four beloved children, and is friendly with one semi-beloved ex-wife.
Rick Kempa is the winner of our Editor's Choice Award for his poem "In Northern India Right Now." Rick is a poet and essayist living in Rock Springs, Wyoming, where he teaches writing and philosophy at Western Wyoming College. A book of his poems, Keeping the Quiet, is available from Bellowing Ark Press.
Winning Poems
1st Place Poem
~ by Levi Noe
OM
The bee's buzz- the hum, the love
Is this Om?
I chase it with my
honey-hungry
wild longing.
What do flowers chant
to make the bees come?
2nd Place Poem
~ Mankh (Walter E. Harris III)
This Is the Somewhere
You Wanted To Get To
this bus stop
before the bus arrives
is also a destination
this bagel & coffee
in the car before
the work day begins
this reading
and delivering of this communiqué,
this now
is the somewhere you wanted to get to
if you could just
kick it down a notch
you would notice this
bliss that lives in the cracks,
between the lines,
in the air called empty
by those who never noticed
this is the somewhere
to get to
if you have arrived
then you are not waiting,
not hoping,
not needing,
step right up, ladies and gentlemen,
see it before you believe it
if this is really the somewhere
you wanted to get to
then clear the table
and call off the dogs,
call off the second coming,
turn off the porch light,
all bets are off,
send the posse packing home
and let's just waltz
between the starry firmness
guiding us, guiding us on
let's just stand, arms outstretched,
a pack of canines
licking our un-crossed palms,
sandpipers piping the sand,
let's take a stand and take our time,
let's give a shit,
make it work,
let's shake it down and do it up
open your mind
allow the clouds
to roll on by
as a goldfinch
eats the thistle seeds
then whistles blissfully
this is the somewhere
3rd Place Poem
~ by Kaveri Patel
Forgiveness
There's something new about the world
the day after it rains.
It's as if an artist
erased the whole palette,
then redrew homes, the trees, the sky
with bolder outlines, and brightened
them with new paint
more vibrant than the old colors.
What if we were all artists
washing away old images of ourselves
with tears of forgiveness?
What if you could see
past outer appearances
and your heart was
your only canvas?
Would you imbue it
with the shades of your love,
or tear it to pieces
to equal
your number of self judgments?
There's something new about the world
the day after it rains.
An artist erases the whole palette
for the chance to begin again.
Spoken Poem Award
~ by Frank James Davis
For Enlightenment
As I now rise
to start life's sleep,
I pray the Lord
my truth to keep.
Working each day,
until I'm dust,
I've yet to learn
just why I must.
My mind might soon
remember why,
if I should wake
before I die.
Editor's Choice Award
~ by Rick Kempa (for the students in my Religious Studies class)
In Northern India Right Now
In Northern India right now
there is a thin, thin man.
He is naked and has been so
for decades.
He is standing off to the side of the road
on one leg,
his other leg tucked high against his inner thigh,
his hands clasped before him.
He has no possessions
not even a bowl like the Buddhist monk.
When villagers come out in the evening to feed him
(because holy men must be fed)
he uses the bowl of his hands.
He does not cut his hair
because it is a home for creatures.
When he walks he brushes the path before him
with a clutch of peacock feathers
so as not to harm the creatures.
He will not kill the mosquito that drinks his blood
If he is attacked by a dog, he is bitten.
He is pursuing
pursuing
pursuing
the Way.
What are we to make of him?
In Iran there are men who
whirl and whirl for days in circles,
their hair, their black cloaks flowing behind them
turning inward towards the truth, towards love,
deserting their egos
seeking through the sacred dance
the Way.
What are we to make of them?
In a small town in New Mexico each spring
one man is chosen-honored-to be the one
who has his clothes torn from him,
who bears the lash, wears the crown of thorns,
who, barefoot, hauls the wooden cross up the steep hill,
is tied to it and stood upright,
while the community gathers in prayer at his feet,
believing that his suffering, his penance,
opens for them the Way.
What are we to make of them?
We might put them at a distance
as objects, curiosities. Weird! Strange!
We might even, if our own small world dictates,
judge them. They are wrong.
Their ways are not Truth
(meaning, of course, "my truth").
We cannot enter their world views,
see them from within.
But can we at least stand at the edge,
understand them,
find something in their worlds
that speaks truth to us?
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