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
As It Is
The earth will use the ash to build a rose
and stones will not be be withered by the heat.
Though tragic it may seem, there’s something knows
that victory is bound to all defeat.
The sky will take on all effects it nears.
Appears to catch the flames from tops of trees.
Blackens and glows and sparks; inspires worst fears.
At length refuses all but blue and breeze.
So little the time that we’re presented.
So great the speed with which it lightly flies.
Nothing should be overly lamented
the very least of all our luxuries.
Life’s doctrine emerges self-evident.
No rose has ever wished things different.
Hey maybe this is really silly but here goes. A sonnet.
Ruined gardens weep like human beings
at loss – most certainly – why wouldn’t they?
When all they love lies dead or falls away
-happiness, supposed meanings of things –
and time mocks, and sun or raging flame
and soil stripped bare, as dry as stone.
No hope. No help. Abandoned and alone
the roses gaze, astonished and insane.
Who comforts them? Who stands in protest?
Who stoops to take the compost to the beds
or fix the hose to lift the wilting heads,
and spread the mulch and tidy up the rest?
Tie up your boots and pull on hat and glove.
The garden call you; it requires love.
What is left of thine,
Where more than a debris shall dine,
Who’d seen thy grandeur as well,
If one of one and forty can tell,
Wherein grapes were schooled to give its best,
Of elegance alone dazzled by men of crest.
Oh thou Château Boswell!
What more can thou tell?
If thou art left standing,
Thy walls then do thy biding,
Of unsung fire hath thou now drunk,
One untamed hath thou sunk.
Oh thou Château Boswell!
Thy vineyard if thine alone fell,
Thy vineyard weary of ardor,
Stripped of her youthful splendor,
Ravished by Nature’s course,
That embarked with no remorse.
Oh thou Château Boswell!
If thou canst still tell,
Where hath thy tasters gone?
Where hath thy lurchers gone?
On a hope they now do dwell,
To see thy graceful state once again swell.
What is left of thine,
Where more than a debris shall dine,
Who’d seen thy grandeur as well,
If one of one and forty can tell,
Wherein grapes were schooled to give its best,
Of elegance alone dazzled by men of crest.
Oh thou Château Boswell!
What more can thou tell?
If thou art left standing,
Thy walls then do thy biding,
Of unsung fire hath thou now drunk,
One untamed hath thou sunk.
Oh thou Château Boswell!
Thy vineyard of thine alone fell,
Thy vineyard weary of ardor,
Stripped of her youthful splendor,
Ravished by Nature’s course,
That embarked with no remorse.
Oh thou Château Boswell!
If thou canst still tell,
Where hath thy tasters gone?
Where hath thy lurchers gone?
On a hope they now do dwell,
To see thy graceful state once again swell.
Survival
The souvenirs of my past lay scattered on the floor
Where plays a melody by a dead musician
I search across the length of my room
The reasons for me to go on
I find gushing rivers and setting suns
Falling stars and silent wishes
Spread like a fabric made of wool
Drape them across my shoulders
And now suddenly I am the nature sprinkling fairy dust of survival everywhere I go
I find death carrying the skeletons falling out of closets
Impregnated with my lover’s dire request to show mercy upon me
But all I see is a smiling widow
Dancing to the twirls of her red Saree
Death like any loner
Secretly wishes for life to accept it
But here am I
Standing on the edge of my artificial being
Gasping for the breaths of relief
Only to find myself singing to the tunes of kun faya kun
I whisper the name of fancy sounding Gods
And travel to the end of my darkness
Waiting to be released
Like water of a flooded dam
How do you survive in situations like these
Where mourners pray for your grief
And then slowly let you go
Like a silk thread falling from your hand
How do you let your world shatter into million pieces of expensive freedom
Under the influence of which you fly high
Claiming to taste the grey looking clouds
How do you eat sand in the end
And remember to chant the name of Allah
As your casket is lowered slowly in the ground
Amidst the violent cries of your grieving mother
I have no answers
I have no faith
I have no questions to frame anymore
But a wish
Falling like a coin in a wishing well
That when I live
I live like a thread lovers tie to the sacred banyan tree
I live like hymns of the temples
And ringing of the bells
Reverberating slowly to form a composition of universe
I live like a wish coming true; impending death of star
revival of one
As the entire sky fills up with
Memoirs of past
Twinkling
Shedding light to the darkest corners of being
And I, standing naked; wrapped in space
Annihilate
Forever
Like Shattering of my room’s window
To let the light fall
Far far away from home
On a tourist’s camp; a penumbra of my presence
Summer falls from above,
Blanket for the blesséd.
Falling soft and velvet
Like a forgotten glove.
My sorrowful gaze clings
To the wounded garnet
Of the blaze incarnate
Red rose’s broken wings.
Burns in burnt shades of brown
Seep through bricks; painful death
Blooms through windows, like breath
Rises up, falls back down.
Nothing left to defend
Anymore. This is fine.
The air must smell of wine
In the hot, scarlet end.
Heavy sandbags of silence sat on my eyelids
slide to my lashes and force my eyes closed
in the closed eye of the brimstone storm
I found myself meagerly watching.
With a touch like water, fluid fingers feel
the stone part beneath pristine sullen skies,
burns blooming like a warm hug,
showing on the skin of the still-standing.
Boswell’s Plea
I may be charred,
But yet I stand;
To fight another day,
In this desolate land;
I dream of better times,
When the glasses overflowed,
When the bushes were clothed, with the finest rose;
But times have changed and that is a fact,
The vineyards are empty,
No one to attract,
The climate is changing,
Yet, you do nothing,
So, I will stand proudly,
In my bitter disgrace,
As a symbol, that you must take action now,
To save the human race.
The vintner walks a lonely path
With nothing but to mourn
For who collects these grapes of wrath
Left singed with sour scorn?
The trellis bare of sweetened fruit
Still stands upon the slope
The irony is absolute
And offers little hope
But even though these days of woe
Do haunt the stone and field
This quaint and dreamy wine chateau
Will have another yield
A rose to all who suffer loss
By fire’s thorny bane
A toast to those who bear their cross
And vow to build again
Forgotten Worship
And on that day
Dionysus watched his worship burn
From purple-red to ashen grey
As castle bricks spat and churned
And to Hade’s halls, the vines returned
Taking a barrelful of prayer
And glasses of Sauterne
Years, a vine had served a castle
offered vintage, made it prosper
Beaut’s a rose, a lovers’ blossom
Years, the kingdom’s yield were wholesome
But, there came a new invading
fiery vine. It clambered, breaking
in the palace, barrels shattered,
windows fell, the villain chortled
spilled and drank them all the wines
Ruins dunned by smoke and cinders
Sadly these are bitter times
not as that of winey bitters
but of falling ashes, charred
the title is “a tale of vines”
Crimson Hope
Drenched in the haze of a withering blaze
Façade of a legacy still remains
Trees weep, roots bleed as the valley bellows
But wine scented halls would return once more…
Hope still remains, breathing through bruised and charred lips
Crimson blossom spared by a monstrous blaze
Just as a rose blooms in the dessert
A glint of hope amidst a singed maze
Spirit of hope continues to linger
Walking through walls tormented and withered
It glows crimson amidst smouldering ashes
Gathering vigour with each dying ember
Walls, left defenceless, yet, on solid grounds
Speak of a legacy from days bygone
Burnt and ravaged yet never forgotten
Time will return the glory that once was
Glass fire
A glass of sauvignon- rich, velvet, red
poured from a bottle – green, smooth made of glass
fired in the heat that fuses grains of sand
to liquid fire and sunlight, blown to shape
and fixed in moulds, house style, to hold the wine.
That same creative fire that forms the glass
wreaks havoc in the hills and fields below
pouring like a destructive libation
into the valley from the Glass Mountain
to Chateau Boswell’s waiting tiers of vines
grapes dried to raisin death on blackened stems
blushing roses withering as they bloomed
and Boswell’s walls left standing, smouldering
reducing it to castellate estate
THE STINGING OMEN.
It stands ripped and desecrated.
Like the ruins of Babylon long forgotten.
It’s elegance even in a glance cannot be sighted.
The worse like the plague swept in unguided.
Chateau were is your grandeur?
For many years our taste buds you had given succour.
We reveled in wild ecstasy; in some otherworldly fantasy.
In orgasmic pleasures, the juices from your grapes drove down our bellies like a chaffeur.
We wish your sorry state was a mere nightmare.
The bitter reality opens up.
Chateau standing like an over-roasted corn.
The hollow space above licking it’s wounds.
The iron door like a prison’s gate locked tight.
The lilies before it looking wearied and soiled.
Like a graveyard, Chateau bleeds with defeaning silence.
The valley death it is and so none would ever tread.
The Photo’s Chosen Rose
Fire and ash, of course–
destruction in the news!
Such power in the force
that damaged all the booze.
And yet, the sun still tends
the bloom apparent there–
no smoke-obstructed lens;
no gray or ashen air.
Nature vents its spleen;
engravings stay the same–
Like Hardy’s drummer teen*,
the place still has a name.
*Reference to the subject of “Drummer Hodge”, the first version of which was written in 1899 by Thomas Hardy; not me.
Shades of Red
A Tanaga by Ryan Watch
Red’s a color most divine.
Sanguine is the hue of wine.
A mass of carmine berries
Pairs well with cerise cherries.
Pink and damask juxtapose
Beside the rufescent rose.
Looming sunsets paint the skies
With deep vermilion dyes.
Now all is splashed in a blood-red
As the flaming fires spread.
Rufous embers scatter dust
And we’re left with nought but rust.
Although no blood has been shed,
We see the walls smeared with red.
‘Tis a lasting scarlet stain
Of burning tinges and pain.
Phoenix
O’ lad,
look at me thoroughly
What do you see?
A ruined building or a devastated land
A hell’s touch or something so bland?
You see I can lament for years…
My beauty is lost, my garden is burnt
My glorious days, I yearn them so much
But time doesn’t flow backwards
So I can only look forward
Towards a healing path of future
My roses are dying but will soon bloom
My tears may taste salty now
But will shortly taste fine wine
The day will come and
I will sing merrily again
Rather than counting my breaths to die
The spirit of phoenix lies within and I meant to rise.
Flamma
A Rhupunt by Ryan Watch
A raging fire
Brimming with ire
Why set this pyre
On the Château?
Witness the clash
Of smoke and ash.
Behold the flash
Of flames aglow.
A lone rose dies;
There are no cries.
Under red skies
Burns the Château
Nothing remains
But barren plains.
Yet from such pains,
New life will grow.
“Runaway”
When I turned thirteen I wore my latch-key as an anklet
Because my twin flame would know me by my gait and flat mildewed feet
The nights my parents worked late and left me home alone I wandered beyond the river bank
To hijack its Ruin
A Gothic Hammock for my
Sleepwalking soul
This is where he parked his caravan
A battered VW the shade of mummy bandage
He unlatched my latch-key
And invited me to that
Subterranean winery
Look for eyes that glow like sea glass, hair as soft as Moss
I am the Crone-gargoyle of patina dreams—
Acid-washed and bronzed
Not unlike Lady Liberty.
A Stornello to Aromas
By Ryan Watch
The bouquet of wine, the sweet attar of blooms
Commixed with ripe and fermented grape perfumes – Are smothered by the stifling flames and its fumes.
“A Door Is Not a Door”
A door is not a door, it is a threshold
Infinite sand blown through memory
Reminding us part of lost glory
And the endless dreams we still behold.
A wall is not a wall, it is my holding
Against which evil is kept at bay
Before me safety and warmth lay
With the roof so gently above me folding.
A fort is not a fort, it is my heart
The keepsake of all which is sacred
The guardian burdened with hatred
A DOOR IS NOT A DOOR
A door is not a door, it is a threshold
Infinite sand blown through memory
Reminding us part of lost glory
And the endless dreams we still behold.
A wall is not a wall, it is my holding
Against which evil is kept at bay
Before me safety and warmth lay
With the roof so gently above me folding.
A fort is not a fort, it is my heart
The keepsake of all which is sacred
The guardian burdened with hatred
*** Sorry last line was lost, here it goes again
A DOOR IS NOT A DOOR
A door is not a door, it is a threshold
Infinite sand blown through memory
Reminding us part of lost glory
And the endless dreams we still behold.
A wall is not a wall, it is my holding
Against which evil is kept at bay
Before me safety and warmth lay
With the roof so gently above me folding.
A fort is not a fort, it is my heart
The keepsake of all which is sacred
The guardian burdened with hatred
What binds me and tears me apart.
A News Article Dedicated to Château Boswell Winery
The famed 41-year old Château Boswell Winery has been destroyed during the Glass Fire on September 27, 2020. Established in 1979, it was known as one of the minority of private owned wineries in Napa Valley. It served as winery, vinyard, and tasting room that provided both tourists and locals alike a savory experience. However, due to the recent Glass Fires in September, the wintery, along with the Black Rock Inn was among the buildings that perished in the flames. Though only parts of the winery still remain, the damage done by the fires serves as a lasting scar for this once lauded place.
The following poem has been written in the Château’s honor:
On its charred remains,
I can still smell the bouquet
Of sweet-smelling wines.
The poetic form I’ve used is the Japanese haibun, which is a combination of both prose and poetry.
The Unburnt Rose
A roar as soft and gentle as a rose
Arose amidst the fire’s growing height
As redwood, maple, willow bent in throes
The night sky bled in fury at the sight.
Those twisting flames, from twisted branches raged
Unleashing spite and anger on the vines
The chateau now (where all but stone is razed)
formented in the scent of boiling wine.
But in the ashen morning, ashen skies
refuse to weep their comfort on the hill
A rose — unburnt, unburnished — never dies
The airless valley: silent, acrid, still.
Though tears of grief and wine of joy are spilt
The unburnt rose will still refuse to wilt.
CHATEAU BOSWELL’S HOPE
Flowing it flared flawless
Blazing sparks all men saw
Shredding peaceful grape vines
California’s bad time
Fine grape blackened by red
Gave hands no field to tend
Gave hands no juice to squeeze
Gave hands no skin to feel
Gave tongues no wine to taste
Now look beyond the blaze!
Restore Napa Valley!
Environment needs it
Hope beams its rays at times
This land will rise like tides