Today

Today is about being

Nothing more.

Drifting in my kayak

Rocking on a gentle swell

Watching rain from Alaska

Blur the mountains

And cross the lake

In the land of the raven

Time disappears.

There is only today,

Only now

I rock on the water,

One with the water,

And simply breathe.

Spirit Rock on Bastion Island, B.C.,
© August 2005

by Pamela Stagg
Won Third Prize at Poetry Contest 2006

One Day While Walking Along a River

One day I walked the river back

through the murky waters of time

and the tangled brush of the past.

I walked through the eras of the world,

beyond the relics and scribbled residue

of all that came before.

Eternity flowed in the earth beneath my feet

Suns caught spark,

gave birth to worlds in a cradle of heat

then slid through eons to their fate.

Galaxies lumbered across the void

still I walked the river back.

Hours seemed to melt into days

which welded themselves into years.

I walked beyond my incarnations;

the forms to which I have clung.

Each step evolved like an embryo,

as my needless mesh and lattice work

dissolved into essentials

and I became unmade.

I walked back until born again from within

and the river led me home.

by Greg Smith
Won Honourable Mention at Poetry Contest 2006

Eyes Open

What do you see

through the shards of glass

in your eyes?

                        Did you see Jesus,

a blinding white light, or just—somewhere

on the edge of consciousness—

the screaming red light?

The woman in the van, the one your pinwheeling

white Cadillac just missed, smokes

cigarette after cigarette. Did she see your eyes

wide with terror

before they were frozen by the pick-up

behind her? Clutching

                                    The heavy blanket

I brought to warm you, I glance

about the car. Your chest swells

with trapped blood; the corpse beside

you rests her head in your lap; in the back seat

there might be another body

swallowed by the voracious grill of the pick-up.

But my eyes are drawn back

to yours.

                        What do you see,

entering the kingdom with eyes open?

I imagine death like a dream of diving

through a lake so clear and cold

your fingers grow translucent.

Is it like that? Tell me it is.

by Stephen Stamp
Won Honourable Mention at Poetry Contest 2006