One of the vestiges of my year at Virginia Tech is my membership in the Phi Kappa Phi honor society.  The society puts out a quarterly magazine that has recently always contained a poetry page and a poetry contest for the next issue.  I have decided to commit to participating, if only to force myself to write one poem per quarter.

One condition for eligibility is that the poem submitted be unpublished.  The Spring issue of the Phi Kappa Phi Forum is out, and provides the proof that my submission didn’t win.  The upside of that is that I get to publish the poem here, where I think it gets read by more people I care about than in the Forum.  Here’s the poem:

Spring Song

A silent world in frigid night
In rigid mortal torpor lies,
Awaiting beams of liquid light
To wash the dust from off her eyes.

My ear to the ground I can barely make out
The crocus and daffodil straining to shout.

The dawn restores the world to sight
And calls the morning chorus rise
To sing its fervor to the skies.

My ear to the ground I can just hear the feet
On creaky old stairs and on cracked bathroom tiles,
A pitter and patter that pools in the street
With bread-baking smells and cologne fruity-sweet.
I find, in the faces of people I meet,
The spring in the daylight means spring in their smiles.

The cold retreats,
Streams gush, ice cracks;
Green defeats
Browns and blacks.

My ear to the round of the swelling of life
I feel my joy grow with each kick in my wife:
I join with the daffodils, crocuses, birds,
And sing to new life a new song without words.

My guess from the comments in the Forum is that my poem was too one-sidedly upbeat to make it “very good.”  I can understand that from a technical perspective a duality and tension adds to the poem, and that bringing the duality out can put both aspects in stronger relief.  It also shows that the poet has thought about a topic and explores its depth.  That said, some things just are better pure and unadulterated – think maple syrup – and joy is one of those.  I’m quite happy with my poem, its metric interplay, and especially with its date.  I wrote it October 21st, 2009, just five days before I saw my first little pink plus.

So every time I don’t win, you’ll get another post here, and perhaps another stab at writing a sure-fire cheesy headline which is guaranteed to drive massive traffic to my blog.  If you want to help me win (or not win, depending), send me your thoughts on “Scare Tactics,” the topic for the Fall issue (I just submitted my poem for the Summer issue on “Recovery” on Saturday, so your help there is too late).

Oh, and note how I used the birds/words couplet here that I just made fun of (of which I just made fun?) in my last throwaway poem, Make It Rhyme.