- Alicia LeSage, Grade 8

The moonlit sky, the stars
The darken green grass,
The midnight breeze
With you everything is good.

The sunny blue skies, the clouds
The soft green grass,
The midday sweat
With you everything is good.

The dark stormy sky, the rain
The wet green grass
The deadly wind
With you everything is good.

The gloomy skies, the flurries
The white powdery grass
The dreadful chill
With you everything is good.

No matter the skies, no matter the weather,
No matter the color of the grass.
Nothing in the world matters because
With you everything is good!

This is the thirteenth runner-up in READ magazine's 2008 Ann Arlys Bowler Poetry Contest. Check back every day through May 1 to see 14 fabulous student poems. Did you enter? One of them could be yours!

-Kristian Alfonso, Grade 12

Elapsed time of call: 1:16
He tells me that I swing my arms when I run.
I tell him I like my space
and it keeps cars from hitting me.

I ask him if he's tried it before
and he says only in Allendale
because there are sidewalks.

Here we have no sidewalks,
no fire hydrants,
we let things burn here.

Elapsed time of call: 3:33
He asks if it is raining where I am,
I tell him only in my mind. He asks
if I had dinner yet and I say
I don't have service.

Call ended.

This is the twelfth runner-up in READ magazine's 2008 Ann Arlys Bowler Poetry Contest. Check back every day through May 1 to see 14 fabulous student poems. Did you enter? One of them could be yours!

- Baobao Zhang, Grade 11

Caught between the pale snow-covered ridge ahead
and the looming tumult of thundering hail, Jack Green
eyed the half-frozen river with a heavy heart.
An unkind Virginian winter, like a mother-bird
bent on hell, had pecked at him since the first of November.
Trapped in his red-brick coffer, Jack had counted then
re-counted the testaments of his fortune: Chinese plates
and Indian tea and Spanish silver bourgeoisies.
But under the shadows of midnight, they haunted his dreams
with polished accusations, pricking his conscience till it bled.

Though Jack Green would never confess the Oirginal Sin,
he firmly believed in Eden and that it existed somewhere
beyond the pine-laced gates of the Cumberland Gap.
Far too old to undertake the pilgrimage, he cleansed
himself with glimpses of spring for personal salvation.
In due season, the wildflowers on the riverbank
would flood his valley with unnamable colors.
And in due season, another shipload of transplantations
would arrive in Williamsburg, eager to choke the
New World--or perhaps to bless it with beauty.

-Ray Bliss, Grade 8

I glimpse a cardinal
in the skeleton
of a leafless tree.

I see him
dance--
a red shadow
in the skull
of a leafless tree.

Fog clothes
the tree with a brilliant
swirling tornado.

But still
the cardinal dances--
smoke, formless, as he weaves
a delicate pattern of lace,

as he dances
in the skeleton
of a leafless tree.