First Place
The Blessed Virgin Dreams of Trees
by Joan Lange

She rests beneath the tree. Above
    Branches sway, nestlings wake.
She rocks and hums a lullaby.
    Life stirs a gentle dance

Inside her womb, for God’s own Word
    Now leads her in a rhythm,
A soothing song that calms her mind.
     Eyes close, breath slows, she rests.

Murmuring wings of bees begin–
     Low droning lulls the girl,
Her falling hair like tendrils, vines
     That spring from earth. She dreams

Of trees–an olive tree, white blossoms
    Fall, fruit ripens. A boy
Plays beneath shade, a home
     With earthen walls nearby.

Within her dreams she rides a donkey.
     Shadows with grasping hands
Reveal a willow, bent low, drops
     Dripping tears. A tree weeps.

Then, a warm blaze illuminates
    Cedar, deep roots that spread
And limbs stretched wide to form crossbeams.
     Wind now blows, branches sway,

Leaves fall, caressing her cheek.
     She wakes in thoughtful silence,
Life pulsing through her veins. She rises,
     Lifts her arms to heaven.

Comments by V. Paige Parker on The Blessed Virgin Dreams of Trees

This poem is exceptional in capturing the imagination, beginning with its magnetic title:  The Blessed Virgin Dreams of Trees.  The olive and cedar trees in Mary’s silent dream are prophetic signs of Jesus as a boy, and at His death on “crossbeams.”  When read aloud, the iambic tetrameter and trimeter lines contain fantastic internal matching sounds, such as the nasal consonant, M, in “womb” and “rhythm”, and the assonance in “close…slows” and “tree weeps”.  I love the repetition of the pronoun “She” followed by various verbs:  she rests, she rocks and hums, she rests, she dreams, she rides, she wakes, and she rises.  My favorite lines are, “Life stirs a gentle dance / Inside her womb”; “God’s own Word/Now leads her in a rhythm”; and “She wakes in thoughtful silence, / Life pulsing through her veins.”  Most of all, this poem plants seeds that inspires new poems, in the reader’s imagination.

Second Place
O Waiting, Anticipate Delight
By Maura Harrison

O Babble—language breaker, prattled clack
And clang—you rattle every generation
Filling the air with screed and sree, with flack
And dust, with noisy gong and exclamation.

Be still and listen to the holy night.

O Reason—wonder breaker, studied facts
And fallacies—you pierce and cull, you dull
All mystery as you craft your artifacts.
Splitting the whole, you only know the skull.

Be quiet, feel the angels lift your sight.

O Unbelief—the greatest story breaker—
Your night has stars, mere moon, and empty space
And yet you fight till dawn to know a maker,
To fill your wordless dreams with form and grace.

Be calm, behold the star of guiding light.

O Loneliness, O Grief—peace breakers two—
You sow your discontent, your low lament.  
O Pride, O Jealousy—you’re nothing new—
You rumble ire and stir up dark dissent.

Be patient, let surrender fade the fight

And fruit the infinite in finite frame.
Sweet overshadow—silent hovering—
Let there be firmament, God-bearing flame,
Inside this silence. Let it be wonder-ing.

         Be silent—hush—hear fiat’s humble might.

O Mater Dei—tender tending ark,
Star of the sea and heaven’s gate—with you
We wait for midnight’s piercing Word to mark 
The moment holy, formed, and ever new.

          Be O-so-still, anticipate delight.

Comments by V. Paige Parker on O Waiting, Anticipate Delight

Mirroring the O Antiphons during the last seven days of Advent, this poem excels in the juxtaposition of the world’s loud unbelief in contrast to Mary’s silent, joyful anticipation of Jesus’s coming.  The nested rhyming one-line stanzas are the perfect invitation to Be still, Be quiet, Be calm, Be patient, Be silent, Be O-so-still.  The abab rhymes are delightful, especially when combined with internal rhymes, such as: “cull…dull…skull”, and “discontent…low lament…dark dissent”.  All of the lines are iambic pentameter, including my favorite lines: “O Reason—wonder breaker”; “you fight till dawn to know a maker, / To fill your wordless dreams with form and grace”; and “fruit the infinite in finite frame.”  Most of all, this poem positions the reader to joyfully wait, and anticipate Jesus, who is our delight.

Third Prize
Treasure
by Mary Colvin

In quiet mornings of her youth she woke
in gloom to start her labors. Whispering
her prayers, she found her lamp and filled the room
with light; then, after kindling the fire,
in silence bore the vessels, heavy on
her frame, to bring the washing water home;
once kneading dough for daily bread, she swept
what dust had settled o’er the earthen floor.
She swaddled work in sacred stillness, so
as not to wake a soul ere day’s first light.
There was the morning when in darkness, she,
feet cold and bare, had felt the crush of bone
in something underfoot, and light unveiled
a writhing snake. Not even then had she
betrayed the silence with a gasp or cry.
And so the morning when angelic rays
had woken her with words of wonder, it
had given her no dread. Her secret gift
delivered quietly, she pondered this:
the fruit of flesh, the rounded face of God
entwined; the source of love itself to hold.
For all throughout her short, unspoken years,
she’d practiced well the holy, precious art
of holding love in her unblemished heart.

Comments by V. Paige Parker on Treasure

This poem embodies the silence of Mary particularly well.  The iambic pentameter lines are perfect—just like Mary—no trochees or anapests anywhere!  The alliteration is gratifying: “swaddled…sacred stillness…soul”, “woken… with words…wonder”, “fruit…flesh…face”.  The poem is divided into three mornings—of Mary’s youth, of the writhing snake, and of the angel.  The middle of the poem is filled with tension from “the crush of bone / in something underfoot”.  This is followed by my favorite line, “Not even then had she / betrayed the silence with a gasp or cry”.  I also enjoyed the repetition of “hold” in “holding love” in the last four lines.  My other favorite lines are: “She swaddled work in sacred stillness, so / as not to wake a soul”; “Her secret gift / delivered quietly”; “the rounded face of God”; and “unspoken years, / she’d practiced well the holy, precious art / of holding love in her unblemished heart.”  Most of all, for the reader, this poem shows what Mary’s silence looks like.

Honorable Mention
Something Silent Moves
by Fred Gallagher

Something silent moves in the girl, moves and
turns and moves again, dreams of ancestors
looking up from their once blinding, dust bound
journeys to the apex of history in
a poor eastern Boy, from his lone Father’s
love to Joseph’s town on a beast’s worn back.
Her lineage and lineage itself
issues in the Child who moves and turns and
turns again, like the slow pouring of cups
in a catacomb to weary hearts, bread
of a winter’s night for those grown hungry.
Something moves and turns from wheat and vine to
Body and Blood, the holy, hushed hymn of
eternal time and saving grace where the
Incarnate comes to meet us in our plight,
moving and turning in hay and starlight,
in silent celebrations of starlight.

Something silent moves in the girl, recall
Jesse and David and the Judean
journeys, to be illuminated by
the beckoning stars of the eastern skies.
A Child moves in the deserts of nomads,
of Abraham and Moses, so faithful
and sad, holding freedom in their frontier
hearts, that move and turn into the breath
of the girl whose eyes ever yearn for her
precious Baby’s countenance in each of
ours, there where Bethlehem furtively roams
and moves and turns, making joyful and glad
each our humbled, our crushed, our broken bones.

Honorable Mention
The Offering
by Christine Rossi

The first moments tremor like dove’s wings over waters
That swell and surge and lift her to shivering heights
Then tumble and crash into unknown depths,
Casting rainbows in their spray.

The room is still and unchanged, yet charged
With a yes that splits time in two—the cog upon which
History turns—meanwhile the eternal folds into her womb,
Empty only a breath ago.

She hastens on pilgrim feet, another miracle-mother
To greet and rouse the unborn prophet’s dance
With a Word not spoken but carried. Her path blooms
With roses, but grows the thorn that pierces.

The seasons turn as time marches to meet its King,
Borne on a beast over weary miles to the House of Bread.
She hears the echoes of a crowd, but only sees
Palm trees bowing in the blistering wind.

This silent night stars hold their breath, waiting
To witness his first, and he who spread out the skies
Stretches her heart to infinity’s edge—still not enough
To hold him, yet he rests in her arms.

The decades pass—only moments—each strengthening
The tether between Mother and Child, leading them both
To Calvary’s hill, where the earth quakes with its sever
As her heart becomes the altar.

She receives him, helpless again in her embrace, but cold
And covered in blood once hers, now his poured out.
Her heart which once felt his beat within now
Transpierced, and one with his speared.

The pre-dawn dark of that third day finds
Her empty arms in prayer, when Hark! A voice
Silences shadows with Do not fear, and
A nail-scarred hand wipes her tears.