First Place
Origins
by Cristina Ciurez, Craiova, Romania
Grace and peacefulness I found When gazing at the starry sky; Massive giants made no sound When chanting magic to my eye.
I lost my awe and fear gripped strong When sky became the field of science. Suddenly I could not belong
And all that wonder became silence.
Why is it that the mind. Cannot let the heart connect To the source of all our life And of our intellect?
Second Place
Home
by Jennie King Bailey, CO (USA)
What wonders lie beyond the milky curtain?
Asked the schoolboy as his hand did skyward raise.
The instructor answered, "This we can determine," And advised the boy to cast his curious gaze
Toward the jewel-encrusted skies far from the city Where the mountains and the deserts blaze with light For the constant rumbling traffic is a pity And the street lamps do obscure a wondrous sight.
That very evening as the boy sat in his bedroom On the fifth floor of his nineteenth street hotel,
A sudden impulse struck to don a warmer costume And to bid the cold fluorescent lights farewell.
When at last the back roads through the night did lead him To where myriad gems paint the earthly dome,
He felt the cosmos play its ancient rhythm And saw the universe for what it was: his home.
Third Place
Nomad
by Annie Gilliland, Arlington, VA, USA
I map my body with the planets and my movements with the stars. An endless rising and setting, from solid to translucent. Sometimes I am Mars
familiar but not,
stable but battle-weary,
occasionally living in retrograde. Maybe I’m Venus,
mysteriously toxic,
or looming Jupiter,
a planetary body with an unknown form. But I am always a wanderer,
grounding myself in time and motion.
Darting from place to place clearing my own orbital path. Some days I am stretched out I am all of it:
and I look for my terminator,
dividing my feet and my eyes when home is peripatetic
and becomes the stillness between places and the web making pictures across a map with points like constellations.
Honorable Mention
LIFE ON TITAN
by Christina Sng, Singapore
Frost is fuel for us,
Encapsulating our husks,
Snowflakes in the dust.
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