Poetry in motion: Part II

The following are three of the winning poems from the 2011 Verses in the Valley contest put on by the Scotts Valley Arts Commission. The winners were honored at a recent Scotts Valley City Council meeting, and the first-place poem from each division have been published in the Press-Banner over the previous two editions.
‘The World’s Mask’
By Jonathan Powell
High school age group
When I look I don’t see the real you
I only judge by what you do
This makes it hard for me to see
But I guess for you it’s a practicality
You want to hide and never show
So we can never know
Why your mask is what it is
And what has darkened its recesses
His mask shows pain and fear
But won’t let him shed a tear
Her mask shows joy above
But won’t let her express her love
Why do our masks show but constrain
And why are they so hard to maintain
Society uses these masks in hope
That somehow it’ll help us cope
With the fear of being different than others
But it does little but smothers
But we don’t care because the way we see
There’s nothing worse than being me
This thought crosses everyone’s mind
And will continue until we find
That our masks can be broken
And it should be spoken
To help those who can’t see
Nothing is better than being me
This will let him cry and let her love
And show that we can rise above
Above the standards of society
Because being yourself is a priority
‘First Light’
By Nancy Hofmann
Adult age group
I lie alone in the big bed,
naked atop the vertical midline
spread out like Da Vinci’s diagram of man:
my fingers splayed, limbs straight.
Outside the open windows,
choruses of birds are clearing their throats
to rouse a still-sleepy dawn,
though the trees still wear
the black tight-fitting clothes of night
against the paling sky.
We are yet stuck together by silences and dreams,
and tentatively now,
we welcome back the blood,
sap, and fire of the rising sun,
relearning skin
and branch
and feather,
this taffy-pulling-away into individual shapes
until we are each whole again
and new
defined against the swiftly growing light.
‘Weather’
By Mary Dettle’s fourth- and fifth-grade science class at Vine Hill Elementary School
Class poem division
The atmosphere is all the layers outside the Earth but we can’t see it.
We see, feel, and hear everything in the troposphere!
The Sun’s energy warms us and brightens our day, bright and shiny fills the sky
with delight.
Clouds come, clouds go which rains, all that remains all day that feels moist and warm
Warm, gassy wet clouds condenses just by me.
As all the water falls off the leaves transpiration forms its needs.
Observing the weather, thunder, rain, or hail
Meteorologists study the weather every day, and they read what weather maps will say.