Poetry Contest Editor's Choice Award

Spirit First is pleased to announce the Editor's Choice Award 2012 goes to Monica Devine for her poem "this." Monica Devine is the author of four children’s books, among them Iditarod: The Greatest Win Ever, a former nominee for the celebrated Golden Kite Award. Her adult nonfiction piece, On The Edge of Ice (about her travels with a whaling crew in the Arctic), won First Place in the Dorothy Churchill Cappon Award for Creative Nonfiction with the literary journal New Letters. Other credits include First Place winner in the Fairbanks Arts Association Annual Statewide Poetry Contest for her poem “No One Thing.”

Monica has traveled extensively to Indian and Eskimo villages throughout Alaska in her work as a speech-language pathologist, and she draws inspiration from the wilderness just outside her backdoor to write, paint, and practice the art of photography. Her fifth children’s book, Kayak Girl, is forthcoming from the University of Alaska Press.

this

by Monica Devine  

I have walked 100 steep steps to the Buddha’s home

And chanted with monks in an exotic Hindu temple.

I have meditated in a cave afraid of darkness until my

mind softened into no sound.

I have sung Latin and received the holy wafer on my tongue,

and walked the Medicine Wheel singing songs

to Mother Earth under a full moon.

Yet in all my pleas to the heavens asking to what drum

does my heart resonate?

my hands unfold

my chest rises and falls with each breath

and a quiet voice says, This.

Just     this.