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
The Charred Cherish
Outside a vineyard charred from fire
A withered rose stood all expired.
She looked and saw within the door
An image she had seen before.
Battered like her from flames and smoke
Just standing there and ne’er one spoke.
The sentry at the entryway
Was glad to have her there that day.
Then softly said she, “My time’s done.
They’ll deadhead me, then there’ll be one.”
He gently said, “They’ll take me down,
But you’ll still grow within the ground.
Till then we together wait,
Knowing what will be our fate.”
Ode to Chateau Boswell
You loom in sooty gloom and tombstone grief,
In dusty shades of faded yesterdays.
One withered witness whispers of a thief
Who snatched tomorrow’s purpose and its praise:
A portent torched the sultry evening skies –
‘Twas Sirius who scorched then stole your soul.
The blaze of mad dog days razed grape and vine,
Left sylvan sprawl as dark as raven coal.
One parched and brittle rose blooms in the eyes
Of ghosts who sing of merriment and wine.
They sing of ripest flesh and plumpest fruit,
Of sun-dipped sips and crystal-clinking toasts:
The aria of ambrosia in a flute
That floats on claret clouds as twilight coasts
Beyond the pyre and mourning’s sear and sting,
Where dreams of Dionysus deign to dance.
I taste the spill of harvest’s luscious splash.
I feel the thrill of summer’s giddy glance.
I see your bonhomie in feathered wing –
A phoenix breathes beneath your shroud of ash.
It was many and many a year ago,
Beside that ravaged wine cell,
That a rose there lived whom you may know
As the lover of Chateau Boswell.
On that fateful day in September
The wine was boiling in bottles.
Vaporous, it swam in the hot air.
The blaze was drunk on its own
prowess, it was a dragon’s lair.
The castle, poised like a lioness
but could not swallow the flames
Yet the singed red petal survived
in the thinning woods, it claimed.
The leaves curled, papery dead
where the bark was eaten down
The metal knocker also burned,
glowing till, a ferruginous brown.
Spot fires joined hands they say.
They were hungry, and untamed,
ran by the road to glass mountain
wrath of this element, thus named.
The chateau now sleeps, drugged
with an unfinished poem in its wall.
The valley waits for it to wake up
to a song, filling up its empty hall.
The Last Taste
After bottles of wine and tears that refuse to run;
I can finally accept the fact that I am all alone.
I never knew how hard my tears could fall.
I never knew at all.
I do not know how to fall out of love.
I never knew how to stop the tears once they fall.
I never wanted any of this pain;
I never wanted any of this, not at all.
Now when I try to sleep, all I can dream is of the chateau that lost you and me.
You said you would give me, and I was to receive; the vineyard, the ocean, as far as the eye could see.
Now I see nothing.
Nothing at all.
Nothing in front or behind me.
Nothing at all.
The tears just stopped.
What does that mean?
Am I okay now?
I take comfort in the fact that I will not drown.
Are blooming fruits in front of me?
I cannot yet see.
Darkness and silence are consuming me.
I lost the light and I cannot breathe.
At all.
My cheeks are as dry as the wine.
The tears forgot how to cry.
I forgot love.
I feel nothing.
Nothing at all.
I would have loved you until death.
Now I cannot live my life.
I cannot live at all.
But tomorrow is a new day.
The sun will shine a new ray.
I have no other choice than choosing to be okay.
My tears will no longer fall as I welcome a new day.
You will be but nothing one of these days,
Nothing… At all.
Dust
Love, loyalty, respect and honesty are free.
If you take me for granted it plants the seed.
The sun no longer shines on us, but the plant still grows.
The plant that was seeded with love has become an illusion.
The seeds of mistrust, uncertainty, fear and confusion have laid the foundation of growth.
What once was bright and full of life withers with neglection.
The plant thrives in the dark; all alone, under the waning moon.
Upon reflection, the seeds were planted in soil with oppression.
Established by infertility we repressed how beautiful it should be.
Nothing can survive when starved with rejection of affection.
The flowers of conversion have begun their bloom. Lost in a void we thrived too soon.
Eclipsed by the irony that we started off as friends.
I can’t move past what could have been.
I thought we would ascend. Instead the flowers turned into fake feelings playing pretend.
You never know what nature intends.
The leaves of memories are filled with dreams of what we once were and strived to achieve.
The night storm whelped what we had grown.
All hope of patience is withering like a cyclone.
From the thorns I bleed. This should not sting.
Along the way you became a part of me.
I pull away and push out the pain.
The scars will always remain.
The stem was the weakest of them all.
It was the first life from the seed.
As it grew it forgot to breathe.
With no saturation or air to grow, the mirage of emotion begins to show.
There is so much I needed to know.
Shadows cast doubt on our fantasy.
Reality was the death of that growing seed.
An oasis of words having gone unsaid.
Life cannot sustain without growth and trust.
During extinction all that remains converts to dust.
© Jamie Clay
Withered
Behind locked door she hides
Cruel world void of love
Warm afternoon strolls forgotten
Loss overrides, and grounds neglected
The garden weeps
The rose withers and longs for her return
Sobbing in the cool moonlight
Tears fall behind door and walls
The pain of betrayal cuts deep
She hides ‘til silver-haired
Tall grass and brown rot
Flowers die, as does her heart
Remembered Taste
Steadfastly here still stands the stone
that perseveres as if the bone
of perished flesh that nature’s pyre
has turned to ash and dust of fire
that devastated hope and dream
for forty years well yoked as team
to reap from nurtured, fruited vines
the press of yields becoming wines
distilling essence craft creates
of love that labor cultivates
as sweetness and as dryness found
uniquely to intrigue so bound
it lingers as remembered taste
of all that passion bravely faced.
Dreams
Visions in a dream revealed to RTB of a wine glass filled.
A tower but no castle seen was standing on the Napa green.
Bounty flowed in a continuous stream, until flames took this golden dream.
Gates built by passion and imagery were closed by 10 20 20.
The truth of years now smoke and ash as the tower dream dissapeared in a flash.
A Rose at Chateau Boswell
A rose who has no offering,
No perfume or regal display,
For that was taken from her,
When the fires came her way.
Singed and stripped of beauty,
For she was beautiful and fair,
A remnant of her former self,
Now in pain and total despair.
Her spirit has been hardened,
Yet she will grow once more,
Bringing her beauty back to life.
Her reserection an encore.
Toni Newell 31st October 2020.
Who set the flame
To the heart of the oak?
That ravaged rose.
Not for Long
In death you stand erect, punctured by heat,
A skeleton of memory stripped bare.
As barrels wait expectantly beneath,
Entombed in darkness, wrapped in cooling air.
Outside with grace a rose prepares to die,
Each day it cries another shriveled leaf.
Smoke hides the gaze of smiling sun in sky,
Life’s strings lay severed, wilting into grief.
But grapes will grow again from richer ground,
Old charcoal spirits sapped for sweeter ends.
Begin again! In budding shoots be found,
For seeds will sprout and wounded walls will mend.
So tap old barrels, sip from simpler times,
For soon we’ll taste new pleasures of the vine.
The Great Renewal
It opened with a thunderous roar
And from the fleeing wind, it tore
Those autumnal leaves whose tinder there
Drew soot black lines of ink in air
The sky did crack and with arrow taut
Did Nature draw and with quiver aim
And laid in wait for the foes she sought
To dust from dust, and ash from flame
“To my hills unbidden,” the grandson cried
And as he watched, his grandfather died
But why, cried he, what crime have I
That I might face such penalty
And when the fire had set and done
When the night had laid its quiet claim
It’s infernal course had finally run
No sound came forth, except the flame
And in the branches of the blackened vines
The angel’s harp did weeping pine
But not sweet melodies as before
But a parting song, called A Closing Door
And the mother joined, and the father too
The tears like a flood, a weeping vain
And his little sister, what could she do?
She cried, but could not move the flame
But this little one, she crept outside
She spoke to the trees, and vines on their sides
And she spoke to the walls, to the birds
And even these, with lament, answered her calls
And her father came, and he also cried
Head held in his hands, crying, “Who is to blame?”
Pacing round, hands in his pockets, then again at his side
And he shouted aloud, saying, “Who can stop the flame?!”
And he said, “Speak to me Old Ones, as you once did.”
But their tongues were still, their faces hid
The echo spoke no more
Only the parting song, A Closing Door
“It’s too late for me,” cried the rose, as her merlot petals fell
And sank into the smoky haze, or ash, the same
The earth too weeps her last, yea she wept upon the knell
Saying, “What have I done? In anger I brought the flame.”
And so, how does this end, the o’er ripe gourd to rot
The fowl and fauna weep of their lot
The choking weed to rise and vine to bend
The once sweet grapes are crushed, the laughter ends
But the father said to his little child, as she hid in her mother’s skirt
“You shall rise again, my sweet, like a poppy on the morning plain.”
When all the ground is ash and these black days have turned the earth
And all the people weep, but know, that too shall pass the flame
And so the song played, A Closing Door
And the sound of flame was heard no more
The stone was scrubbed – the soot was ground, but not quite gone
The rose had died, but the seed lived on
The Resilient Rose
Embrace by embers grace
Tinged with slight flame center untouched
Guarded by fate
Reminisce of the wild fires remain
Stained upon more then just wall, door, forest, vineyards and chateau set engulfed
Was someone livelihood that turned to ashe
Hope with in this rose
Still remained
There are some in life who are also liked to this rose. Seemingly burned on the outside but soft and untouched at the core
We may have been shaped by the wildfires of life but as the is roses resilience remained.
So to do we have the choice to forge our won resilience in the flames.
With the blessing of the
Time will not pause for me
The rose will fade to be replaced
This is how it should be
They once built in stone to show their might
They started an empire of a thousand years
Over in a blink
Shattered in the fire of a thousand red hot suns
or Maybe just a brush fire
And then there is nothing but the roses
Weeping and shedding their own lifes blood
As all that is left of the memory.
But they did not go gentle, they stood defiant against the shadows of the sky
When its my time I will walk along the beach.
Stand in the shallows with my skirt tucked in my undies.
Let the incoming breakers skittle cheerfully over the sand.
Until a big one gallops up and splashes me full on, so I have sand and salt water everywhere.
Sea foam in my hair.
I hear the mermaids singing each to each
So I will leave the beach and swim out to join them.
My recently dyed purple-red hair
will fan out behind me like a unicorn’s mane.
My hair will tangle with the sirens as we wheel ecstatically down.
Looking up I see bubbles between me and the moon.
I will grab my memories in my fist
and leap defiantly into the mouth of the Kraken.
They will not weep for me.
I forbid it with all of my fierce heart.
Go with a bang. Not a whimper.
WISDOM SPRINGS
I have parked my soul outside the city
To find if there is enough space for me
To breathe with dignity in burnt Chateau Boswell
In the ruins half way through
I step over sleeping stories of the past
Testimony of wine
In me sinners and saints meet
To manufacture fantasies
Fire tarnished all assumptions
Destruction dethroned
Wine and vineyard
Now hope lingers on clueless walls
Hopeless road leads to the native land
Of burnt roses
Where birds fly across the face of logic and rationality
Clarity dissolves
Existence invites texture of life
Butterfly shall emerge from a cocoon
What unstable world brings
Out of nothingness wisdom springs
“Do Flowers Burn?”
“Do flowers burn?” my daughter said
With innocence writ on her head.
At first the question seemed silly
But she did not relent her plea,
Her face now flushing angry red.
Our supper ended; all were fed.
The stairs, to sleep, the fam’ly tread.
My daughter would not let me be:
“Do flowers burn?”
The thought I now began to dread
That even beauty winds up dead.
I looked upon my frail Lily;
Her loving eyes glared back at me.
I told her, planting her in bed,
“The flowers burn.”
“Have You Strength to Drink of the Cup?”
The memory remains despite the fire
Of fertile hills and clustered purple grape;
(A kingly sign for consummate desire)
The Everlasting takes a stricken shape.
So strange that suffering would paint with grace
And set ablaze the petalled flames of flow’r.
A Burning Light came to that darkened place,
A garden where the darkness had its hour.
Now hangs a rose outside the wine’ry walls
Its color blackened like a bloody bruise.
The nat’ral thing submits to nat’ral laws:
A kind of Calvary it did not choose.
A bitter vintage pressed, the cup of strife:
The seed must die to yield abundant life.
The raging fire fought
Dying hungry embers
Still quenched the grape
But ah! the vine remembers
Castle
Here lies the fierce castle
that begot my ancestors.
No wooden drawbridge unites
its innermost with the outside:
Time has eaten its shape,
rain has dissolved its hardiness,
sun has broken its strength.
No more arrows fly from deserted arrowslits—
these long scars in the rough walls—
to reduce and dispel ranks of foes.
Only stones remain, and many gone
to patch houses, walls, wells.
They became tombstones,
grounded ships never meant
for land’s inactivity.
Only wind walks through its broken avenues,
softly, like a maiden hand’s caress;
and when riotous, coerces atoms of stones
to join its hallucinating cavalcade.
The wind crafts sounds that mimic the past
and I hear them all so well echoing
in the silent night of my days:
dogs howling, men’s voices, horses hooves,
the sweet sounds of a dulcimer
entwined with my lady’s voice…
The rose garden gone her memory stayed behind
and courts me at every step I take
from within the past.
I love it and I hate it, and you ask, how can this be?
I really don’t know, but Christ, it’s crucifying me.
Glasses
It was our future once
winery, flowers, tours.
But the fires ended that
with flamed-blackened décor.
It was our future once.
Modest dreams. Hope de jour.
Yes, the fires ended that.
No whining- we’ll endure.
The Rose
Sheltered in stone, no longer bone,
He stares with unseeing eyes at the rose before him,
Unable to descry the billowing smoke,
Nor feel the heat as flames licked the ground,
All that remains, are brick and mud,
A sign, some leaves, a single rose.
A single damaged rose
Waits to be picked,
Waiting outside castle walls
Beautifully it sits.
Though charred, there remains
An eerie beauty,
Captures you almost
Like a line of poetry.
What wine-filled memories
Those burn walls must hold,
How many fingers
Must have traced this rose.
Oh, Sweet chateau
I shall drink to you,
For only the best glass of red
Within your walls were brewed.
Beauty may be scathed
But nonetheless remains.
Just as life on Earth
Is threatened but remains.
It’s the everlasting piece
of vibrant life
that keeps us holding on.
As the rose survives the fire,
So do we.
Pantoum for Boswell Winery
One burnished rose speaks of hope
Within the root the will to rise
To future with a new born scope
Held within the heart’s comprise
Within the root the will to rise
Where dreams of life still grope
Held within the heart’s comprise
Where vines and people seek to grow
For dreams of life still grope
The past a stalwart for the wise
Where vines with people grow
Held by faith that will arise
The past a stalwart for the wise
Who look ahead with wider scope
Held by faith that will arise~
One burnished rose speaks of hope.