This summer, I submitted a poem to the Poetry in Motion program. Ten poems are selected and put on Metro Transit buses for a full year.
The WFNS website describes this year’s theme : The 2023 submission theme, “joy,” was open to broad interpretation—including happiness, delight, glee, festivity, or ecstasy; the objects, causes, or sources of joy; the joystick, the joyride, the killjoy, schadenfreude, or other complications of joy; and other meanings, qualities, and impacts of joy.
Today I received an email from one of the judges. He told that my poem had not been selected, but I was on their shortlist ! I have never entered a writing contest before, so this was a bit of a shock. I jumped up and down in the living room with my slippers on! I am thrilled to be shortlisted. (If I ever actually win a contest, I’ll probably do cartwheels on my lawn…which might be difficult with just one working arm 😉 .
Here is the poem.
Night Joy
Bright celestial blanket
A quilt
Mammoth
Wrapped around the world
Eternally
The firebugs morse code
to those in the sky.
Life: Before and After Stroke. 