See the winners here.
Above is a recent photograph of Chateau Boswell, a winery, vineyard, and tasting room located in California. It has suffered terribly because of the recent “Glass Fire” in Napa Valley.
Write a poem based on the above photo and post it in the comments section below. You will then be considered for the $100 prize.
WHEN: Now until Sunday November 8, 2020 midnight EST. Winners Announced November 15, 2020.
ENTRY FEE: None
WHO: Anyone in the world, any age or background, may participate. From within the Society, anyone, including Advisory Board Members, not involved in judging the contest may participate. (If you are outside the United States, you will have to have a PayPal account or a bank that accepts U.S. checks to receive the prize money if you win.)
WHAT: Each entrant may submit up to two poems of any length. Entries are expected to be classical in style, meaning that they must have a regular meter. Rhyming and other traditional techniques are of course good as well.
WHERE: Post your poem in the comments section below.
PRIZE: $100.
JUDGE: Evan Mantyk
Chateau Boswell – Napa Valley (2020)
The trees become complicit once the flames
with tinder and the swirling wind are fed;
an ash-and-smoke enveloped skyline frames
the mountains and the hills which men have fled.
The vineyards are a battleground unused
to Nature’s rage, for newly in the fight
they fall before a fire that’s amused
how feebly we can douse its orange light.
A bastion to Bacchus is no match
for blazing, seething heat that cracks its stones,
that chars its rose beds, burning plants like thatch,
or acid stripping melted flesh from bones.
Such scorched earth conflagrations are a test
to see Mankind’s resilience at its best.
Chateau Boswell
A chateau scorched, as was the rose,
singed by a wall of heat and flame.
The fire ignited — no one knows
how or why or who’s to blame.
Both blighted by the blaze and heat
born on the shifting wind the blew
became ravenous fire’s meat
broiling the roses where they grew.
The cruel nature of the fire
wildly snatching as it goes —
a door, a window — on the pyre–
a woods, a winery, and a rose.
All Napa glowing orange-red
smoking up the fruit-filled vines
tearfully the lifeblood bled
toasting on the Boswell wines.
Proud beauty more than forty years
she stood with roses ’round her grown.
She will not now sink down in tears
tho’ all be burned except the stone.
Chateau Boswell
A chateau scorched, as was the rose,
singed by a wall of heat and flame.
The fire ignited — no one knows
how or why or who’s to blame.
Both blighted by the blaze and heat
born on the shifting wind that blew
became ravenous fire’s meat
broiling the roses where they grew.
The cruel nature of the fire
wildly snatching as it goes —
a door, a window — on the pyre–
a woods, a winery, and a rose.
All Napa glowing orange-red
smoking up the fruit-filled vines
tearfully the lifeblood bled
toasting on the Boswell wines.
Proud beauty more than forty years
she stood with roses ’round her grown.
She will not now sink down in tears
tho’ all be burned except the stone.
Climate Fire
Charred brown stone. The odor of burnt roses,
red and lingering over desiccated
stems, dead leaves, its beauty scarce abated,
even as its essence decomposes,
dissipates into the smoke that poses
as a summer mist, a scene created
as a reverie so long awaited,
castle where a shattered dream reposes.
This is how it is when fire rages
in a nation’s soul. Denying facts
kills just as surely as the woodman’s axe,
and yet despite the evidence, naught changes.
Perhaps this is the future we have earned,
where castles, vinyards, rose gardens can burn.
Temple Torch
On star-strung bead of rosary a lumen light profane
Repent in pose placebic rows in temple tomb arcane
Ensnaring fevered frond afroth on kindled carousel
Of bole and branch implore celestial spires shivered knell
Lo trespass of unwholly soil once verdure vestal voiced
Enshrined in azure symphony on wings seraphic hoist
When flight and flame and orbic rain of elemental mar
Besiege the viridescent verge by mortal vultures scar
Harmonic hymn in terror toiled with venom vapours whelm
Betouch by babel blistering an erst idyllic realm
A sanctuary to leaf and loam to wild untethered beast
Through teeth of ruination torn unhumankind unceased
To sky with limbs in arabesque a yearning cry recourse
Surrender sylvan sacrament when raked of verdant force
A flickered fang aflame on skin of sapling writhed in vain
In embers bake the bones of earth amidst assassins’ reign
Those palmers praise to heaven sent now sunder world apart
Renounce remiss to resurrect and reason a restart
Enwrapped in woes of squandered deed while naught for Nature weep
Who lonely in her ashfill crypt through ecocide asleep
If you look closely you can see
Shadows of what I used to be
But now I’m broken, bent, and burned
Is this the point of no return?
I once stood proud beneath the peak
Adorned with steel and roses meek
But now I crumble at your feet
Struck down by smoke and reckless heat
The world around me, still it spins
On ignorant and careless whim
I mourn my glory on my own
Graveyards of ashes and of stones
I wonder if it’s worth the try
Or if the good things always die
Chateau Boswell Burnt in Glass Fire
Don’t cry for drooping blackened rose
or for the chateau’s scorched stone
or for grapevines in flattened rows
or for the bottles shattered on stone.
or for Dionysian afternoon
long gone in burnt-out tasting rooms
or for lost bees and paths flower-strewn
or for oak barrels fire consumes.
Cry, if you must, for 2020 vision lost,
for smoky taste in wine after a burn,
for beauty the rose no longer hosts,
for grief ignored by need to soldier on.
For spilled sun like wine on black terrain.
For ashes, estate of man in ruin.
Human ardor, human dreams —
And all around us Nature teems —
Reified in stock and stone,
What’s lost in flames shall be regrown.
Chateau Boswell Stands Alone
What volumes written into reddish stone
The turret stands beleaguered and alone
And near the charred and heart-red savaged rose
A line of time and beauty surely flows
Time’s author spelled the heat of fire’s rages
It licked the land and slurped the vineyard’s wages
White of dust, or reddish, darkly jaded
Bemoan the hour: Boswell’s been invaded
I put my sonnet in the comments section on the 16th, but it has not yet appeared. Could one of the competition organisers help me out?
When I tried to re-submit the sonnet, I was told that it had already been submitted.
Done! Sorry for the delay.
MOURNING TINTERN ABBEY
The flash of flame, the searing of the soul
The wrath of Nature mocking what men build;
The bricks, the rose, the dreams devoured whole…
O, who can measure grief for what was killed?
I think of Tintern Abbey lost to time.
The ocean floor that is Titanic’s home;
The dreams destroyed, the works of art sublime
Entombed beneath Jerusalem and Rome.
As dies the rose so must we face our fate:
Our days of living are so very brief;
The winds of change come hard and seldom straight —
Singeing beauty, singing us to grief.
To tame the world comes at a dire cost —
Tears of ash which baptize what we’ve lost.
IN RUIN THERE IS BEAUTY STILL
In ruin there is beauty still
Not just the stinging sense of loss
for what is gone: the trees, the hill,
abodes of brick and leafy moss;
For mourning need not break the will
Of life to overcome the cross.
In ruin soul-wrecked pain is wrought.
Sad-silenced is the beaten heart
The battle that was nobly fought
Is lost, the castle torn apart.
But banish dark despair from thought!
Death’s victory shall cleave apart!
From ruin life begins anew
Grieve not as doors and chapters close!
These woods will thrive as they once grew
The land is rich, the brook still flows…
Despair must not ignore what’s true.
A rose though burnt remains a rose
I made a typo on the second to last line. It should read “Despair must not ignore what’s true.” Thanks.
Fixed-Mike
Beauty
How to Choose?
To live in Stone
Or to die in Rose
Both form Beauty
of their own, kind
Chateau Boswell – Napa Valley – Sonnet II (2020)
A regiment of flames converged to gauge
an architectural misfit from beyond
a continent, an ocean and an age
of yore that brought to mind our Old World bond.
So Chateau Boswell stood its ground alone
as flames descended from a glowering hill –
an Alamo of glass and slate and stone,
at mercy of the wind’s capricious will.
The swiftly-marching conflagration breached
the vineyard ere it razed the famed estate;
consuming grape and woody vine it reached
the winery and clinched the chateau’s fate.
And through the smoke the shattered walls still stand,
a monument to Nature’s callous hand.
Charred with wilt, with stones unbuilt
Yet door and root remain intact.
Chateau undone, it could not outrun
Fire that paints in black.
A damaged rose, but it still goes,
the way of all things living.
It must fall, yet I am in awe,
That life brings new beginnings.
Here’s to hope and to open doors
That fire can not keep closed!
Here’s to health to you and yours,
And to a trellised vine that grows!
This was beautiful! Good Luck
Beauty meets Beast
the Hindenburg crashes
the spectators clap;
it all ends in ashes
Beauty meets Beast
blush burning her cheeks,
giddy with Stockholm syndrome
The story’s the same
each loop around,
an endless palindrome
Unbomb Nagasaki
unburn the castle
restore the forest
unfight the battle
The asteroid strikes and unstrikes the Earth
the dinosaurs return
extinct in reverse
Beast reverts to Prince to beast
volcanic landscape gives way to the sea
Red, Red Wine Forever Flows
Red, red wine forever flows,
Inside deserted sandstone chateau,
On a bleak horizon, one red rose,
A fire of glass, heartache grows.
Inside deserted sandstone chateau,
Stories remain behind doors closed,
A fire of glass, heartache grows,
Smoke replaced by shattered Bourgogne.
Stories remain behind doors closed,
Nothing black or bleak to a Pinot Noir,
Smoke replaced by shattered Bourgogne,
New “flutes” to flame and play sweet scores.
Nothing black or bleak to a Pinot Noir,
On a bleak horizon, one red rose,
New “flutes” to flame and play sweet scores,
Red, red wine forever flows.
Old Vinyard
The rose grows to be mournful, not austere,
the edifice still standing that it served,
in need of patch, its equity unnerved;
they beckon with the opposite of fear
to embolden what as other each holds dear:
strong roots, the ground around them richly turved,
with each of them a face still gently curved;
more hope attends them than it might appear.
These days have come to test their will to stay
the thing they are, these weakened sun-scribed arcs
just tentatively strung from night to night
that even doubt moist weather’s erstwhile grey
for fear to brace a threat far worse than sparks:
to be abandoned by the rays of sight.
The orange fruit dove who perched upon an untouched sea of grace
Whistled gentle knells of vapor that ascended into space
By the time her prayers reached heaven, her home had burnt to ash
A hollow shell of dreams that now will never come to pass
The rubble stone that once had forged a mighty wall of gray
Now shattered into vagrant ruins mulled and swept away
Not long ago the pediment was hemmed with Grecian vines
Whose skeletons now waste away like spirits lost in time
And though she mourns for what she’s lost and for what may have been
The orange fruit dove will take to sky and start to build again
For creatures live a thousand lives and she has come to know
Through soil bathed in somber tears, new life begins to grow
Reminiscence
Cowled shadow-shapes in dim doorways, prescient,
Observe burnt roses, ochre stalks, all bent
Yet still recall how ordered living was.
Sharp odors from the burning, and the buzz
Of hungry bees, who search and fail, then sigh
Along the grapevine, now all charred and dry,
Where graceful gladioli climbed to Heaven,
Like medieval ladies, in jeweled hennin;
When bells chimed over shattered glass, poems rhymed.
Trapped deep within a fortress sieged by flame,
This lonely, blazing sanctum will not die.
From Screaming Eagle to a lesser name,
The vineyard’s heart will live to see blue sky.
If not in mortal form then in immortal minds,
These shimm’ring vaults of nectar shall be saved.
For time is ever-razing and unwinds,
And yet one soul can douse the fires depraved.
If but a single bud survives the blaze,
Then time’s unyielding rage is not the end.
With passion shining through the smoky haze,
The spirit of the craft shall still transcend.
So long as those who hold it don’t concede,
A brand new vine will blossom from the seed.
Cheerio, Black
We dye skin?
And peaches to the brim
That test we skimmed
Too close to the rim
Did you buy your vim?
Maybe you love Jim?
But do you hate your kin?
Like you do your limb?
Blood by a dead pin
Should we dine with some gin?
Maybe call for a din?
Tell me close, I’m grimm
“Opportunity in Ruins”
A green barrow grown to mourn
A baked apple tempting to a thorn.
Slip a sip by the pin tip
Feeding a root ownership,
A simple proof dripping merciless
Against a brick’s permanence.
Hints of charcoal licorice.
Pale fire bounding tigerish –
Paw prints in black currants
Evidence this infernal occurrence,
A crimson tongue flaked in gold
Leaving darkly glass and ashes cold.
Yet wait on tears to pour.
Some tomorrow making more.
Another act in Napa opera
Only degrees bad as phylloxera.
All kingdoms rise and fall.
Hush and hear the ghosts they call.
Mouths melting glass blow a sphere
Another world growing clear.
Moved by Equidifference
I pressed the door open and you came forth.
Background, we saw was stark; foreground, two gowns.
Static vision I said we saw twice more.
To draw, we did. Unwell, too frail, get hail.
Tomorrow, with sorrow, we share the curve with towns.
We must take turns to screech glued joints; we’ll prowl.
Admire us fired, hot pyre, under tyres; we doth.
Doth it; the trick of wet attire; all guns.
Give it the heft, that zip, holy dipped; with gall.
End me, end us, doth it; feel us, we’re froth.
This thing, this dream; this shine we see brings downs.
Too here, too good; this thing we see at fore.
We must, we should compare this day to jail
We’re stuck; equal, we march. We’re sole in towns
Write here, take this, let this; this pape’, your oath
In time, they’ll know; we’ll show, we’re one; no more
The Lees-Soaked Ground
With translucent clutch,
Glass lifts to lips warm.
The first tasting touch
Swiftly turns to harm.
A flare of licks sops
Wine bulbs on their string,
Desiccating crops,
Accolage singeing.
The thirst spreads beyond
Vino’s sumptuous rows.
Glass opening yawns
On brick patios.
An iron door warps
As it is swigged down,
Sealing vineyard’s corpse
In the lees-soaked ground.