E.E. Cummings Prize Honorable Mention, selected by Susan Donnelly
Carolina Silverbell
The first was for my first. The arborist
warned me against that
rocky ledge, but I wanted the newbie
where I could watch it every
morning. So it grew: soft
white bells the first spring, while the sapling
rooted, shallowly, its leaves dying
off even before she jiggered out
of the stroller in her powder blue
overalls to bolt. The second
for my second waved from the back — sheltered
by fir, settled in humus — until we left it one
hot summer. Alone, he charged off, past
pitch pines and beach roses to the razzle
dazzle of breakers on jetties. Many
mistakes. Yet, look, above
wintercreeper and stone, the first
has come back, sturdier and nodding its little
umbrella of blooms.
Barbara Boches’ poems have been published in Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, Poet Lore, Solstice, SWWIM Every Day, upstreet, and other literary magazines. Another appeared in The Griffin Museum of Photography in In Your Mother Tongue: Image and Word Dialogue. She resides in Brookline, Massachusetts with her husband, Edward.