We’re pleased to announce the winner of the February WWWC: Robert Dawson. Responding to the prompt ‘sweet world’, Robert’s poem ‘Boötes’, a meditation on the stars, gives way to questions about nature, youth and what is lost when we disconnect from nature.

Read his winning entry below.

Boötes

The ploughman’s workboots tromp the dark.
This night three stars have lit the beam,
two on the frog, the third dirt down
on the mouldboard, squinting at the matutinal
glow that winkles through the clouds.
Yourself, you stand on the steps
still with the strange night’s sightmare
on your lips: How you sat
atop a swaying lookout tower
counting the cones of each conifer
tree by tree …
… standing there on the steps
where the three-star boots stomped,
envisioning a grizzly on parade.

Redskin once more, twelve years old,
Kemosabe of the range, Hiawatha
of the foaming rapids, trusty scout,
compadre of cactuses and junipers,
twelve years old, without a wristwatch
but equipped with an anthill compass,
moss on tree trunks, sun above
between the crowns of fir and hemlock …
and there was only this day, only this forest,
the fragrant resins and the tangled roots,
the boulder shadow, the paper skin
of a rattler sloughed on the trail.

When the stars of Old Boots

give way to the wills of day,

when the feathers of your war-bonnet fade,

when the forest has been compassed

and the plough horse has his lag,

and when this sweet world transmutates

into a stock exchange quotation,

when the branch we sit on

is no longer part of the fallen tree,

we need to ask:

Was it really us holding the saw?


We who once promised
never to be older than twelve.