Award Winning Poems

Rover’s Last Day                   (First Place, “Mars” Category, 2020 Poetry Challenge,

Highland Park Poetry)

Fifteen years at the task, always doing what was asked

never questioning an order from the great beyond

back on somewhere called Earth,

exploring, rolling, sifting, scooping,

analyzing, computing, photographing,

suffering through heat and cold

without a squawk, but secretly

planning to make a break,

NASA’s Opportunity rover rolled

twenty-eight miles on Mars,

charting previously unknown

landscapes on the mysterious red planet,

laying in wait for its chance to shake

free and live its own life,

shutting down communications one day

just like that, no one knew it had found a secret

rover resort, with a beach, volleyball courts

pools and mixed drinks hidden behind

one of the many hills, with a casino to boot,

and bands playing interplanetary music all night,

what a wild reward for all of that hard work,

with plenty of outlets to plug in and recharge the batteries,

if only they knew back home, but then they’d come and spoil the fun,

Opportunity kicked back on a lounge chair

and looked out at the beautiful red dust sunset

dancing and dazzling with joyful light and thought about time

in all of its many shapes, curves and forms,

happy to be unfettered and free at last,

and floating along through space in

a beautiful endless Marsian dream.

(First Place, “Giving Voice” Category, Illinois State Poetry Society Annual Poetry Contest, 2018)

Dance Party at the Durban Airport        

The singing at the

Durban airport

started slowly

and grew louder and

louder until it

attracted people from

all around,

the singers stood in a ring,

swaying in a rhythmic dance

and clapping their hands

while chanting a hypnotic

song with back and forth

responses,

the smiles spread and soon other rings

of people were around

the singers singing along,

soon a big dance party

took over the airport lobby

something to hear & see

and join in on

I think it might have been

a school sports team

heading to a national competition,

just like the cheering

chanting group

dressed in shiny blue track suits

at the gas station/market

rest stop on the way to the airport,

such joy and

happiness manifold.

(First Place, “Electricity” Category, 2018 Poetry Challenge, Highland Park Poetry)

Without Electricity                     

Without electricity

where would we be,

moving about the streets

like dizzy unshackled prisoners,

bumping into each other

with wide eyes and outstretched hands,

free of devices and looking out

at colors, trees, birds and

beautiful white clouds dotting

the sky like songs waiting to be heard,

we might go for a walk

or read a book

or sit on a swing and feel

the wind blowing leaves past our feet

and soft sunshine within our minds,

a powerless yet empowering place to be,

dancing alone with others

away from the lights

and into the moonglow

looking for crumbs that feed the soul

and tapping joyful toes to the beat of

an unplugged-in existence,

the inner electric switch turned on

and dialed into the universe,

crackling with the big boundless

beauty of love.

Night Knows                                (First Place, “Night” Category, 2016 Poetry Challenge,

                                                                               Highland Park Poetry)

Night knows

when to fall

and fly about

on bold,

beautiful

black wings,

soaring through streets

and diving deep

into the darkest

corners of castles,

villages and towns,

wrapping everything

in its smooth, silky embrace

like a roll of Cimmerian

expanding cloth

that covers the land

and won’t let it go

until the faint embers

of dawn flicker, unfurl

and spark to

start another

big, bright Ferris Wheel

turn of day.

  (“Night Knows” is included in my just-published collection of poems, “Black Forest Dreams.”

If you’d like to read this for yourself please consider purchasing a copy on Amazon by clicking Here! )

(“Wings, Honks, Flaps and Flips” was selected as one of the award-winning poems in the 2014 Highland Park Poetry “Poetry That Moves” Contest. As part of the award, this poem was combined with beautiful artwork created by a local high school student and displayed on the insides of buses running from Evanston to Highland Park, Illinois, for a month in 2015.)

Wings, Honks, Flaps and Flips   

A symphony of birds flew up

in a big beautiful swooping flutter

of wings, honks, flaps and flips,

covering the sky for a moment

before disappearing over the nearby hill,

leaving behind a suddenly quiet and still beach,

a few people on benches and the soft

beat of waves of water spilling toward

and receding from the shore as if calling out

each bird’s well-remembered name.

(“Sizzling Fiddlers Sling” was selected as one of the award-winning poems in Highland Park Poetry’s 2013 “Poetry That Moves” Contest. As part of this award, this poem was combined with beautiful artwork by a local high school student and displayed on the insides of buses running from Evanston to Highland Park, Illinois for a month during that same year. “Sizzling Fiddler Sling” was also selected for 18th place—out of two thousand entries--in the 7th annual Writer’s Digest Poetry Awards Contest in 2012.)

Sizzling Fiddlers Sling

Sizzling fiddlers sling

out notes in Zakopane

from each rustic restaurant

along the main street

basses plunking boldly

to keep the big beat

while the fleet-fingered

accordionists add crisp, crackling

logs to the soaring gypsy bonfire

before the musicians

break out into sudden song

with stout backs and full hearts,

as if pulling a cart loaded

with large musical notes from the

mountains to each shepherd,

each girl in a colorful peasant dress,

each wandering tourist sitting

over wine and beer and peering

for awhile into Poland’s

festive, foot-stomping soul.

 (“Sizzling Fiddlers Sling” is included in my award-winning second collection of poems, “Postcards From Poland.”

If you’d like to read this poem yourself, you can purchase a copy of “Postcards From Poland” on Amazon by clicking Here !)

Ruby Reds                                  (Honorable Mention, “L. Frank Baum’s Land of Oz” Category, 2019

                                                                    Poetry Challenge, Highland Park Poetry)

Those ruby red slippers

have lived on in memory

because they can take you home

from colorful Oz to

a bleak black & white Kansas farm

or anywhere else you want to go

and isn’t that where you’d choose

to go if you could

back to where warm meals are waiting

and the people and things you love in

present or past are stored, each

a touchstone in the deep well of family consciousness

that’s molded you into the person you’ve become,

just three clicks and you’re back

from wild and woolly adventures in the world           

at large, and the twister’s over and

plenty of familiar faces are crowding ‘round,

welcoming you with open arms, smiles and love,

but the slippers will always be there,

up on a dusty closet shelf,

calling out to you to come back to Oz and

the glorious green Emerald City someday,

with all of that radiant, beautiful, shiny,

sparkling possibility and power packed in

those little old ruby reds.

Deer Bridges                               (Third Honorable Mention, “Nature” Category, 62nd Annual

                                                        Chicagoland Poetry Contest held by Poets & Patrons, 2016)    

 Deer bridges span smoothly across the Black Forest autobahn

as sleek cars and buses speed along,

astounding curved structures filled with trees,

bushes and plants as if the forested land on one side

had thrown a tentacle across the road to the other edge

so that rabbits, deer and other animals can pass over

without a scratch,

how much planning must have gone into such

a wondrous, outlandish and expensive thing,

a curved botanic garden above the concrete,

steel and signs of man-made roads

full of vehicles that never once gave

nature a thought on the way to important destinations

in every compass direction,

but here someone took a breath and

paused to look and think

what animals might need and want

and then put such magnificent foolish ideas into motion

amidst the constant motion of

blurring, whizzing, whirring wheels.

(“Deer Bridges” is included in my just-published collection of poems, “Black Forest Dreams.”

If you’d like to read this for yourself please consider purchasing a copy on Amazon by clicking Here! )

Red and Green Men                 (Second Honorable Mention, “Free Verse” category, 61st

                                                     Annual Chicagoland Poetry Contest held by Poets & Patrons, 2015) 

Red and Green Men,

on the pedestrian street-crossing lights,

telling us when to walk and when

to stop,

angular old-fashioned pork-pie hats

and sharp suits,

they strut their stuff,

do their thing,

take care of business,

knock down the goods,

rockin’ it like the tiny jazz hipsters they

indelibly are in eye-catching vibrant two-dimensionality

set on the edge of ultra cool,

stratospherically transcending the typical dull-witted crossing

lights in other countries burdened with simple mindless colors,

instead, here are men with a purpose

(and a little humor, like guys on the inside of a good

clean Dagwood Bumstead water cooler joke) who catch

the attention of tired travelers,

end-of day workers and eager-eyed children,

to whom the red and green men seem almost alive,

part of an animated movie or cartoon where reality

is often bent and curved like Einstein-esque light and

turned into a world all its own,

the men say go, the men say stop,

you can’t help but smile and wink back

and if you’re a child, you feel as though you’re winning

the war against rules and regs and school, with these

buddies of cartoon fun, tireless and true and full of

seeming subterfuge, magnificent, elegant,

ready to rumble red and green men.

 (“Red and Green Men” is included in my just-published collection of poems, “Black Forest Dreams.”

If you’d like to read this for yourself please consider purchasing a copy on Amazon by clicking Here! )

Thinking of Germany               (Third Place, “Journey” category, 2014 Illinois State Poetry Society

                                                                                        Annual Poetry Contest)

 Thinking of Germany,

of Black Forest relatives unseen

for thirty years,

of the house (still there)

that Grandma Kuhn and her

brother (my godfather) Reinhold grew up in,

way down south in tiny Seitingen-Oberflacht,

where farming was a way of life,

and steady muscles were required

for milking the cows and feeding the chickens,

unloading train cars full of wood and

using a heavy scythe to cut the tall fields of

grass, or working in the Siegelhutte,

the clay tile-making barn in the winter,

digging deep for the clay and putting it in molds

for kilning into solid forms for roofing use,

hard, hard work for little return while all of

the other brothers and sisters left for America

and the depression between the wars hit,

requiring a wheelbarrow full of worthless paper money

to buy a loaf of bread, until there was nothing to do but start over

in a country new in every way, where they didn’t know the language

or the customs, but had relatives waiting with open arms,

and jobs no one wanted to do for them to grab,

packing up and leaving it all behind, everything they knew

for the complete unknown, while other relatives stayed

behind to take over the house and farm and keep the distant

home fires burning, waiting for a return at some future

as yet undetermined time,

the scythe hangs heavy on the shed wall,

searching for the same hands that held and worked it so well,

swishing the fields and felling the grass

as if surging rivers were coursing through

a man and woman’s veins while droplets of sweat

slipped to the parched ground and gave slivers of hope to

ants and seeds below.

 (“Thinking of Germany” is included in my just-published collection of poems, “Black Forest Dreams.”

If you’d like to read this for yourself please consider purchasing a copy on Amazon by clicking Here! )

 Lonely Red School-Bus                    (Honorable Mention, “Color” Category, 2014 Poetry Challenge,

                                                                                          Highland Park Poetry)                                               

 Lonely red school-bus

off to the side of the bus yard

up against the fence,

far away from the other

buses prowling proud

in gleaming yellow tones,

are you pondering fate or

maybe just sitting in

the shade for a

quick snooze,

all cozy & colorful & different

from all the rest,

glad to be free of the pack

and running wild & free

as a bold red kite in the wind?

Nine Holes Near Krakow                 (Honorable Mention, “Sports & Games Category,” 2013 Poetry

                                                                                 Challenge, Highland Park Poetry)                                     

Nine holes near Krakow,

laid out in the countryside

like soft pieces of cloth,

far away from the hustle & bustle of

the Rynek Glowny,

a quiet gift of barely rustling

grass, trees and sunlight,

filled with no-one but

the sleepy golf-pro and

the talkative young cab driver

who drove you to this

Nirvana-like place

in the little village of Ochmanow,

nine holes of the sweetest

solitude as you trudge from

shot to shot, up steep hills

and down the backsides of

others, following the swoops

and curves like a map of your life,

contemplating each shot

like a poem, or a lover’s sigh,

surrounded by gorgeous

farmland, red-tile roofed houses,

and occasional distant puffs of

chimney smoke, you swing

and feel in harmony with

the earth and the birds cawing

“dzien dobry” (good morning)

overhead, while the groundskeeper

mows the fairway grass at a steady

humming pace, you look at

the clouds and the horizon

and think of your family

and wish you could share this

magnificent inner moment

when time stands still

and it’s just you and the ball

in a manicured Garden of Eden,

thankful for all you have

and hoping you can pass on

this passion for a sport

and the outdoors to your

sons, so they, too, can

feel the joy of one-ness

in places like this,

where Kings once hunted

and deer roam free, baffled

by the man who smiles

and stares at the ever-lightening sky.

(“Nine Holes Near Krakow” is included in my award-winning second collection of poems, “Postcards From Poland”

If you’d like to read this poem yourself, you can purchase a copy of “Postcards From Poland” on Amazon by clicking Here !)

 Greenblueblack                   (Honorable Mention, Adult Category, 35th Annual Jo-Anne Hirshfield

Memorial Poetry Awards, held by the Evanston Public Library, 2013)                                                                                     

Greenblueblack runs all blur

on the ice-cold skiing slopes

in frigid February, making eyes

water and skin feel frozen like

a blast from a refrigerated storage

room in an ice cream factory

until the bottom appears and

you’re back on the chairlift

hiking up high in the ski,

bumping over each tower holding

the metal cable that pulls your

exposed-to-the-elements perch

up to the top, letting you commune

with nature for a few sweet moments,

the sunset shooting brilliant bursts of light

over the nearby hill, the people

on the slope below dazzling with

their terrain jumps, spins, soars,

and falls, snowboarders slashing

with swhooshing glee, creating a distant

sound completely different from the

peaceful side-to-side scrunch of

skiers, all occupying the same slice

of snow, interweaving a pattern of

the most intricate design, aware of

each other, but oblivious, too, to

anything but the motion downhill,

the trees on the sides, the contours

and moguls all entering eyeshot for

split seconds and then fading away,

the countryside stretching out in all

directions from the top of the hill,

huge green John Deere tractors gleaming

in a factory lot barely a mile away,

waiting quietly for the next ignition

spark, crank and turn.

(“A Box of Harmonicas” was written in honor of a friend named Leza who passed away due to cancer in 2011. My wife, Renata, and I visited Leza at her big old wonderfully-rambling vintage walk-up apartment near Wrigley Field while she was recovering from chemo treatments and noticed the box of harmonicas that she kept on hand for playing the blues. I also brought my guitar to the hospital during one of her last few days in hospice and softly sang her some Elvis songs, since Elvis was her favorite singer. To my surprise, “A Box of Harmonicas,” which was written as a tribute to Leza after she passed away, somehow landed in 85th Place in the Non-Rhyming Poetry Category in the 80th Writer’s Digest Writing Competition in 2011. This was my first award-winning poem, and it always reminds me of Leza, who was a sweet, kind-hearted person full of friendliness, positivity, personality and good cheer. I’m so glad my sons got to meet her at our house several times over dinners—and that she got to meet them! )

A Box of Harmonicas 

 A box of harmonicas, reeds worn and still,

sits patiently in a house filled with

four birds and a dog,

waiting for an owner who will

no longer return to play

sweet simple songs or

rumbling blues or

maybe even a cool

Elvis tune.

A box of harmonicas,

well used and saved, as if

for someone else, as if

for someone mysterious

and hidden in the shadows,

or a child walking calmly

in bright white light.

A box of harmonicas,

an old small toolbox, really,

with a typical yet elegant

curved metal handle,

sits waiting, twiddling thumbs,

wondering where the music has gone.

The birds chirp and the dog whines,

but the reeds stay still and silent,

a sign of a life well-lived and loves

well-loved, and wines once sipped,

and parties once held

and friends laughing,

crying, talking.

A box of harmonicas,

nothing more than that,

but everything, really,

everything about one life,

one soul,

one note,

sounding out,

long and strong,

big and bold,

and just as funky

as a New Orleans juke joint

can get on a hot, steamy

summer night.