Age 8 and younger
First Place
Snow Day
Everly Beasley, Middle Tennessee Electric
Snowball fights with friends and a brother
Making snow cream with
Snow and milk and sugar
Going sledding at the
Ag Center is fun too
I get chapped lips
And Cold Fingers
but I still have fun.
Second Place
Today I Won the Fight
Addison Coblentz, Meriwether Lewis EC
Today I won the fight,
with one little termite.
I maybe will name him Mite.
I live in Tennessee.
Actually I will name him Lee!
Third Place
Wintertime
Benjamin Rudd, Duck River EMC
The cold winds blow,
Outside the low is freezing or below.
When the snow does fall
We will make snowmen so so tall.
But spring is coming soon,
And the snow and ice will all be melted soon
But I will enjoy the snow and the ice while I still can.
Age 9–13
First Place
Springing to life
Sophia Rogers, Meriwether Lewis EC
After the winter snows and blows,
“everything springs to life”
When the sledding and skiing
come to an end,
“everything springs to life”
When the cold weather ceases
and the warm weather increases,
“everything springs to life”
When the bear comes out of his slumber
and slowly starts to lumber,
“everything springs to life”
When the crocus comes out of her hiding
and slowly starts dividing,
“everything springs to life”
Alas! spring is here everything has
sprung to life!
Second Place
The Herald of Spring
Reece Turner, Duck River EMC
The call of a robin echoes through the wood,
A lonesome cry in the lifeless expanse.
Such an otherworldly sound is oft misunderstood,
But it’s a welcome of Spring in advance.
Flowers and blossoms they soon shall appear,
As they rise from the cold winter ground.
All creatures now return, or seem to reappear,
For now there is food to be found.
A phenomenon like this comes just one a year,
And it happens with nary a sound.
Yet amidst of it all will be found one thing—
The robin, the herald of Spring.
Third Place
Why Can’t I?
Emma Porter, Cumberland EMC
The bumblebee cannot fly
Its body is too heavy for its wings
But it does not know this
So it flies great heights for all to see
If many minds such a tiny creature can defy
Why can’t I?
If the raccoon can be so famous
And the hummingbird flap its wings at such high speeds
Why can’t I make history?
Why not do it today?
If these tiny creatures can accomplish such great feats
Can’t I too achieve my greatest of dreams?
Next time you see a bumblebee fly
You need to ask yourself
If it can try
Why can’t I?
Age 14–18
First Place
Winter Symphony
Lilian Umbarger, Duck River EMC
The gale’s lonely howl
seeps through barren boughs
Nature seeks solace
the harsh cold disallows
Swiftly snowflakes dance
in skirts of doily lace
Notes of sylvan ensemble
etch a crystalline trace
The ice covered brook dons
a mirroring cloak
Gone is the sound
of the bullfrog’s croak
Icicles glisten where
green leaves once hung
Their song awaits ‘til spring
to again be sung
As the landscape is covered
in a blanket of snow
Seeming to emit an iridescent glow
Shrugged beneath the frosted
caplet of an icy tomb
Spring’s orchestral score
awaits the cue to bloom.
Second Place
Tennessee Trees
Hannah Stone, Middle Tennessee Electric
I imagine a family of trees
Their ghosts staring back at me in the land opened up like a wound
Festering with piles of rubble
A blank and uninvited canvas
For humanity’s next endeavor.
Every year the cycle of green, orange, and brown cloaks the forest
Leaves are born and leaves die and new life always arrives
When the darkness cannot last a minute longer.
When the machines appear
Creatures scatter
Knowing their space is no longer secure
No longer mystical creatures but merely
Pests
Third Place
The Call of Home
Paige Carroll, Appalachian EC
I have long since left my Tennessee home.
Concrete spirals around me in waves now.
I no longer hear the siren call of the whip-poor-will in the trees on warm summer nights.
A wooden front porch painted blue-gray no longer touches my feet.
I only smell smog now instead.
I again wish to hear a church bell ring on Sundays.
I again wish to feel a sense of pride when talking of my current homeland.
I again wish to feel the stories of generations past course through my veins.
I again wish to go home.
Age 19–22
First Place
New trail, Old home.
David Smith, Fayetteville Public Utilities
I’ve never walked this trail before,
though the scent is so familiar.
The pines and the cedar trees surround me
in an embrace of seclusion.
wherever I go in the forest I am welcomed,
even while the world outside leaves
an unforgiving taste.
Nature restores the light inside my eye,
like a rekindled candle,
and the brisk air of the mountains
fills my lungs with the air I need
to return to life.
If I take off my boots and feel the soil
with naked feet, my mind returns to me
from the fog, and my smile from the valley.
Second Place
Green Creek
Cheyenne Lackey, Cumberland EMC
Green creeks
Marinade the grass.
Cold stones
Create kingdoms not of comfort
But obligation,
Not a need to protect
But service
The animals of the wood.
The insects of the wind.
The roots of the soil.
Tsunamis produced in small settings
Quicken the air.
Panic ridden scurrying,
Spiced blood generates currents.
There is something in the air.
White mist paints a pale picture
Of a sun sagging in the sky.
A heaviness and horror
Unable to be named.
Even the grass falls victim to flooding,
Floundering under the weight of water droplets.
What is there left to do
But sink.
Third Place
If These Words Are Seen
Anna Moss, Gibson EMC
The points are what make the line what it is,
But perhaps these lines have no point at all.
Red ink, my heart etched on a page.
And all the while,
The fear that if these words are seen,
The words will see me.
How can I reveal a mystery
Still hidden from me?
Or how can I showcase a shadow
That has shielded me?
More blessed the givers
Than those who received,
For at least they had two mites to begin.
And happy the reckless,
Bold riskers of rejection.
Age 23–64
First Place
Appalachian Timber
Neat Toensing, Powell Valley EC
Think history known
told by rings and roots
Accuracy let’s bemoan
since the story dilutes.
Shapeliness or deformity
Trunk’s skeletal support
Reveals enormity
of the human sort.
True tales cannot be etched
Snapshots captured of past
Branches outstretched
Sap seeping tears aghast.
As leaves stop to listen
nexus of conversation
holds position
and relates association.
Immortal am I
for seeds bear
A smile wry
shows sign of despair.
Second Place
Old Man Winter’s Bride
Rachel Blackwell, Middle Tennessee Electric
Everything is stoically cold, veiled in pearly wedding-white,
Old Man Winter’s bride, a blank canvas for foot and pawprints, for tire tracks and angels in the snow.
A scarlet-feathered cardinal fruitlessly pecks at the frozen earth searching for sustenance, a messenger from the afterlife, hoping their loved one will look out and spot their striking vermillion coat, a small splash of color in January’s frigid bleak monotony.
At twilight, the naked skeletal tree boughs once robed in autumnal glory, now bear nothing but empty weathered nests coddled in the highest limbs, haunting reminders of the new life spring once brought.
Third Place
Irises
Jonathon Hawkins, Middle Tennessee Electric
The irises stand firm.
Each one a reminder
Of Grandma’s bedcovers.
(Little boys remember the strangest things.)
The patches of purple there
Next to the road,
Always such a welcome
To those passing by.
I still hear her calls for breakfast.
The bumblebees filled with nectar,
Dew bursting on each leaf.
These were my irises.
She always said so.
Her hair tinged white even then,
Glistening at the door.
I left them still that day,
My irises.
Only ‘til the next dawn,
‘Til the sun rose heavy against the sky.
My irises,
Casting shadows
On my fading youth.
Age 65 and older
First Place
The Mighty Tennessee
Vicki Moss, Middle Tennessee Electric
Many things lie
beneath green
waters of the mighty
Tennessee – two
black rotting mules
in tattered brown leather
harness that didn’t make
it from the ferry
to the muddy shore
with their wagon,
a house that drowned
while a rooster crowed
from its battered
roof, and boats
caught in the suck
dying swirling deaths
along with Scot-Irish
longing for forty
acres while holding
on to Revolutionary
War land grants,
Antrim boys now soggy
in wet graves.
Today she holds to
TVA boundaries
like kindergartners
chastised red for
coloring outside lines,
still holding on to blue secrets
while just rolling through.
Second Place
A Tribute
Edna Delk, Chickasaw EC
Winter cups his woolen hands and blows a summons calling us to you again, oh pleasant mount!
Beneath a canopy of amethyst clouds, we gather at the threshold of your hallowed summit.
Your outstretched boughs bend down to embrace our sorrow as a crimson cardinal perches nearby wafting his sympathy in soft, trilled melodies.
We surrender her now to your solemn repose, to be cradled among the ancestral generations resting here, those who settled and farmed this land long ago.
Beckon us no more, beloved mount! May only our cherished memories now do the beckoning.
Third Place
I Can’t Go Home Again
Stanley Long
I can’t go home again.
Everything’s different;
Erosion scars the land;
The dusty gravel road is paved;
No train whistles sound at night,
Nor roosters crow at daylight.
I’m a stranger now.
Trees replaced the old house,
Foundation pieces scattered,
A brick here, a stone there.
The winding creek flows clear.
Sandstone slabs from its bank
Fill waist-deep pools
Where big chubs used to hide.
The best memoir
Cannot let me experience
The fishing hole,
Feel the evening breeze,
The creeping water snake,
Or the captured squirmy crayfish.
I can’t go home again.
