Our Bacopa Literary Review 2015 First Place Poetry winner, Diane Stone, is a former technical writer-editor who lives on Whidbey Island north of Seattle. Her work has been published in Comstock Review, Soundings Review, Windfall, 5 AM Magazine, Rants, and other publications.
Here's Diane Stone's prize-winning poem, "Local Weather":
The weather guy points to a wall-sized mapSubmissions open until June 30, 2016
that's slightly out of focus--green smudges
of moderate calm shift north
beside a long orange curl of turbulence.
Wedged like slobs in front of the evening news,
we wait for today's unbearable truths.
Just give us something simple, mister,
like the low this morning or when the sun will set.
We can deal with simple facts.
Dazed by the evening's jolt of crime,
we want to believe in something true as rain,
as if black hoods and body counts might, just might,
be washed away by evening showers.
It's hard to rise above our low-level doldrums
until we hear his weather blessing,
his final benediction that the coast is clear--
tonight and tomorrow too--
then we haul our bodies from the brink,
fix dinner and a second drink,
consider if the next few days will deliver
all he promised, sun, high clouds,
no disaster in the forecast,
but we won't hold him to it.
Later, submerged in moonless dark,
we turn to each other to confirm heat and cold,
grab a hand to hold.
Eventually a storm of one kind or another
will sweep away both good and evil.
Eternity alone has endless balmy weather:
winds calm, skies blue,
maybe light fog in the morning.
