Competition Disposition

Last year I won the first place gold medal prize from World Poetry Movement. Recently I got an email requesting a submission for this year. I looked thru the poems I had written in 2012 and narrowed my choice down to three: Afternoon Swoon, Resident's Absence and View Adieu.


Competition Disposition
Original by Robert Frost
14 January 2013

Three poems lay on my desk of wood
And sorry I could not submit them all,
Limited to one entry as I understood,
I read them and thought as hard as I could
About which to send in answer to the call.

Each having its own rhythm and rhyme
And all equally appealing
As suited to the subject and paradigm
Of a requested poem at this time,
My quandary proved to be revealing.

The more I looked the less I was sure
Of which was the best to submit
And which one had the most allure.
So I tried the familiar procedure
Of asking the people most proximate.

I shall be telling with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Three poems lay on wood and I --
I used my own judgement to go by
And that has made all the difference.
_______________________________

The Road Not Taken
Robert Frost (1920)

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

View Adieu

View Adieu
22 December 2012

By a series of jerks and tugs,
The old man awkwardly lugs
His familiar rocking chair
From it's usual spot to where
The best view appears.
Then he takes down the sheers
For an unobstructed sight
Of the winter solstice sunset.
He sits to catch the daylight,
Then he half-stands to reset
The rocker with a final salvo
So the sun is centered in his window.
He didn't always get to enjoy sunsets.
Much of life was earning a livelihood,
One of his best retirement assets
Is having time to enjoy as he should.
Only by glances can he watch the grand show.
On this eve of the longest darkness,
This late in the day, the sun's glow
Hurts his eyes to look at its starkness.
When the sun goes behind a tree.
The light decreases slightly.
Moving at its own stately pace,
The sun slowly slides with grace
Paralleling a palm tree trunk.
When the sun's two-thirds shrunk,
He stands to watch the radiance
Gradually diminish in brilliance.
Finally, the last sunbeams peek
Thru a tree branch's leak.
When the show's over, he tows
His chair back to where it goes.

Actually, he's not like he's made out to be
Because he's really just little ol' me.