Scotts Valley’s Nancy Hofmann won this year’s local Verse in the Valley Poetry Contest, reciting her poem at the SV City Council Meeting last Wednesday.
Each June for the past 14 years, the Scotts Valley Arts Commission has sponsored a poetry contest that invites people of all ages to enter. From K-1 through adult, poets have flocked to compete. The winner of this year’s adult division was Nancy Hofmann who received first place for her poem “The Window of Fig Jam.”
Hofmann has entered the competition for the past seven years and has either won first place or has placed second. Asked why she writes poetry, Nancy said “My mom was an English professor and she used to read poetry to me. I just loved the sound, the music of it, and so I started writing my own stuff when I was a teenager.”
Six years ago, Hofmann formed a writer’s group called True Tales, which currently meets at the Scotts Valley Library. The members write true stories usually about their own lives.
The K1-12 schools that were represented by students were Brooknoll, Baymonte, Mountain School, San Lorenzo Valley High, and Scotts Valley High said Trish Melehen, Scotts Valley Arts Commission.
The Window of Fig Jam
By Nancy Hofmann
At the memorial service for his beautiful wife
last week, he said he cried when he tasted
my fig jam, spread on his toast.
“It was SO good…” his voice trailed off.
I imagined the tears running down his cheeks,
dripping silently off his face onto the napkin below.
I thought about how I picked those sweet purple figs
and how their velvety-softness startled my very fingertips.
And how gently –like holding a small fish in water –
I reached out to welcome them.
I gathered the lusty blood-oranges
from my small tree out back
that my husband refuses to eat,
squeezed their ruby-colored juice,
staring down into the glass
in awe and questioning purpose:
“If not to drink, what then?”
So I married the figs with the citric red liquor,
stirring the pot in swirling ritualistic circles,
my wooden spoon the moderator of miracles.
The jam, thickened and done,
poured into hot and clean glass jars,
sat in countable glory by the stove to slowly cool.
Now I marvel at the surprising steps of transformation:
from tall full tree to my hands to pot to jar.
From his mouth to his eyes.
From my hands to his heart:
a miracle of opening the windows to Heaven
where we least expect it.
God is truly in the details.
We have only to behold,
to allow the goodness to enter,
and the wash of tears free exit
when we overflow with too much love.
