Driving among them at dusk feels irreverent,
as though you’ve disturbed a sacred ritual:
200 white towers marching into the wind,

their three arms spread wide in a continual plea
for redemption – silent, gaunt, and focused
on the horizon, lined or clustered in the fields.

But no – they are only symbols of our own
audacity, like their wooden precursors
in ancient Persia and sixth-century Sistan,

the Heron of Alexander, or the great-fanned
wheels along the Dutch Rhine that rose amidst
red tulips and farms. These new high-tech turbines

stand vigil only for us, unknowing and dumb,
computerized, innocent of plunder.
Didn’t Odysseus learn this lesson once:

that the god of winds does not take kindly to our
trifling with his gifts? How many deities
have watched tiny humans fritter away

their riches, then persist in taking more?
Fire was only their first mistake. Were others
chained to rocks as well for ceding gold, pearls, oil?

This vast acreage of towering spires may last
for centuries, gulping the wind to feed
our every desire. Or they all may simply rust –

once we’ve stripped our last scrap down to the bone.
Is it really possible to tame the wind
while standing in the eye of the tornado?

KATE HUTCHINSON (First Prize Winner, Pushcart Prize nominee)
Illinois

Copyright (©) by Kate Hutchinson. All rights reserved.

She is the Goddess, Gaea, Mother Earth
And She orbits the Sun in Joyous Mirth.
She spins on Her axis, waltzes through Space
Gracefully and at a leisurely pace.

A long time ago, on another Day
In a Virgin Birth from Her Mud and Clay
New Life sprang forward from the Mud and Grime.
A simple Life Form. Just some mushy Slime.

A mixture of Hydrogen and Methane
Water and Ammonia may sound insane
But when blasted by Lightning from the Sky
It created Life Forms that never die.

Now it all came from that first Spark of Life
And Winners survive in this Game of Strife.
Evolution that selected the best
Kept what it wanted, discarded the rest.

Photosynthesis used Light from the Sun
Made Oxygen and Food for Everyone.
With Oxygen in the Air and Plant Food
The Animals were in a happy mood.

For billions of Years everything was well.
Then Man came along and created Hell.
He savored Meat and made Animals bleed
And had a downright insatiable Greed.

Dominion, he claimed, was given to him,
And rule over Animals was no Sin.
And those two Major Vices, that were Twins,
Arrogance and Greed, were his Major Sins.

He chopped down Forests to build his Warships
And only left, on the Ground, some Wood Chips.
Then he needed Charcoal to smelt Ores
To make Metals he needed for Wars.

With no more Forests to make his Charcoal
He learned to make Coke from a Rock called Coal.
To light his Lamps, he hunted Whales for Oil,
Put it in Barrels, so it would not spoil.

With the Whales mostly gone, to feed his need,
He turned to Mineral Oil, in his Greed.
Giant Mosquitoes, all over the Land
Sucked Mineral Oil from out of the Sand.

We have made Methane and Carbon Dioxide
Into an Instrument of Suicide.
Hydrated Methane in Mud of the Sea
May toll the Death Knell for you and me.

She is a Goddess over which we tread
And we must walk gently in awe and dread
Lest we arouse Her displeasure and Ire
And She rise up and destroy us with Fire.

CARL HASPER 2nd Prize Winner (Tied)
New York

Copyright (©) by Carl Hasper. All rights reserved.

Polar bears in handcuffs frog march to zoos,
To languish walled-up in sunshine and rain–
Those not yet dead, and many are, awkwardly
Sliding, then drowning.

And I thought by now
We’d all be exiled with them to moon or Mars.
Instead, brains and backbones waste, trees
Fade and frazzle, we have few seawalls,
Though the Dutch build them–Manhattan will get round
To them after the profits have been shared
And the bagmen scuttle west to Santa Fe
Thousands of feet above the millennial flood–
Only they’ll need to have barbed wire and walls
To keep the frenzied mobs from overrun,
Able to escape their compounds only by air.

When I was a boy, there was the Eagle comic,
Where Dan Dare was on Venus fighting wars
Against green men whose gang boss ruled
From a small hovering boat balanced on air.
He had a large green balloon-like head
And was separated from his native foes
By the great central belt of exploding fire
Around the midway of the second planet,
Whose heat we did not then exactly know–

But Dan Dare was unafraid and always won.

Now Earth is threatened with such a fiery belt
That might change the whole ball till it looks like
A small sun like Venus really looks and did.
And where to I wonder will we all escape?–
Since, of course, we will always win
Survive for the next grand cosmic cliff-hang?

I know.

I want to be the next Dan Dare,
The secular cosmic savior,
Come in from outside penetrating the atmosphere
Through my head and all the secrets it’s hiding.
They must be there,
I am Dan Dare,
And I will call the young folk up to take their spades
To build the next high dike against the rising sea,
The Great Wall of China being nothing like it,
To create our great American-dream defense,
Brighter and stronger than Star Wars.

I am Dan Dare,
And my spaceship the Eagle,
The secret of constantly renewable fuels
And perpetual-motion machines–
Even now, I can feel it–
Residing untapped inside my head.

ANTONY OLDKNOW 2nd Prize winner (tied)
New Mexico

Copyright (©) by Antony Oldknow. All rights reserved.

The buildings do their best to hold it in,
dark brick facades absorbing old Sol’s glance.

Surely the kindly sun will help us now.
Our little photovoltaics charge and glimmer

glamorous in the light. Arched porticos
bake us with radiant heat. The AC roars.

We have lived too long, and the blues guitar
mumbling from the quadrangle agrees:

hard rains gonna fall; hard rains gonna fall.

We have lived too long and slept too late,
and we have eaten and drunk too much.

My labmate drinks a beaker of the old south,
barrel-aged nepenthe, hipflask Hippocrene,

says it’s all a hoax. The ice-shelf shifts in the heart–
the algae blooms–our students’ Hummers, Cayennes,

imitation Cobras and Corvettes–these wait for us.
We have driven too far, too fast, too drunk.

the sun keeps shining through the pouring rain

And yet the parking deck pours oily wash,
steaming from the sun, into the weedy concrete slab

that forty years ago was Muscadine Creek,
fringed with wild grape and wild honeysuckle,

a neck of woodland fresh for sparking, spooning.
I turn back to the gas chromatograph,

bottle my response, listen for the ionizing flame,
torching still more of this small flask of sun.

JEREMY DOWNES (3rd Prize Winner)
Alabama

Copyright (©) by Jeremy Downes. All rights reserved.