Dream Quest One
First Poetry Prize Winner - Summer 2016
is
Sally
Clark
of Fredericksburg, Texas - USA
"A VIEW OF CONCRETE RIBBONS"
I
remember when I was young
and driving thirty miles in sixty minutes
of rush hour traffic
twice a day so
I could work for eight hours two cities
away from my children
in a high-rise
office that afforded a view of concrete ribbons
screaming in every
direction with
people who knew my name but that's all.
I
used to think about my grandparents
tucked away in the piney woods in
their small, wooden
house with a
screened-in porch for summer sleeping
and their tiny kitchen
with a green Formica
table top and a clear plastic cover over
the floral
sofa so you could see the bouquets underneath;
a vegetable garden and a chicken coop,
a trout
pond and an old pick up truck
the oil company gave my grandfather to drive
to check their
wells, twice a day, his job,
and them waking up together and working
alongside, him
hoeing the garden while
she did the laundry and sitting down for lunch
together,
every day, bowing their heads to
say thanks for the sweet corn and the left-over
fried chicken and the coupons for paper towels
in the newspaper that day and how those
vinyl chairs clung
to your flesh and never wanted
to let your legs go anywhere else.
#
# #
~By Sally Clark
About the poet:
After retiring from the restaurant business in
2001, Sally Clark developed an interest in writing and joined a local writers group. With their encouragement, she discovered
she had a talent for writing poetry. Since then she has been widely published in journals, magazines, gift books, and anthologies.
Visit Sally at her web site: http://sallyclark.info 
