Bobbi Kennedy Memorial Prize
Frances Pearce, “Dilemma”
Honorable Mentions:
Christina Baumis, Elizabeth Robin
The barred owl calls and I’m snug inside
though not yet in my nightclothes. My day
began with wren song and a wedge of
muskmelon. It ends with me little wiser.
I’m pretty sure the mice whose scampering
I hear will evacuate the attic once nights go
hot. I’d like to be thought of as kind. I’d like
to be kind. The owl might deem me so if I
force the mice out into the open. The mice may
judge me compassionate if I continue to shelter
them. What right do I have to make such decisions?
A meal for an owl: the death of a mouse.
Dilemma
Judge’s Comment:
The underlying portrait of a culture here is wonderfully expressed through the basic metaphor and how those details are ultimately themselves a pile of leaves, a jumbled disarray of what we try to ignore. God is in the details.