After a short hiatus, Cultured Vultures’ Poem of the Week is back and the competition has been closer than ever before. Poets from all over have entered this week with there being plenty of debate and discussion on the panel about who should take top prize.
However, there can only be one winner and it’s our first ever double award winner, Christie-Luke Jones. After claiming the prize a few weeks ago with his ‘Urban Fox’ entry, the talented writer is back on top again. Before we reveal his winning poem, here are the third and second place finishers who weren’t far behind!
3rd Place
Jerome Goerke – ‘The Ring of Doubt’
At the valley floor of the white crown kings
Ringing the shores of the Achensee,
On Christmas Eve I curved a path
Round the floes of the Alpine lake –
Cracked and iced like emerald slate –
Down to the town of Pertisau,
Where eaves and trellises lined with gold
Flickered in the fall of the evening gloom,
Beckoning the man who waited the moon
On the lonely path the poets take,
Trusting their art to secure their fate.
After a mile on the snow bound path
Riming the curves of the Achensee,
I turned to find a lonesome man
Bent and bowed with a stoop back gait –
Cloaked and faint like awaiting fate –
Far on my path in aftermath
Yet casting a shadow of future fears
Over the way that ravels in years
To a pauper’s lot – that risk we take
If we are to walk in the muses’ wake.
Vexed by the figure in the dim grey light
Hobbling the rime of the Achensee,
I moved on haste towards a fork,
Dark with thoughts of a poor old age,
And there I paused a time to gauge
Lights in the night to guide me right.
But all were aglow with one like the rest.
So there I remained with my rhyme repressed,
Caught on the fork of sonnet or wage
Till the moon appeared to whiten the waves.
In doubt I lingered by the two pronged path,
Watching the waves of the Achensee
Milk and ripple the rising moon –
Stalled by thoughts of a manqué’s life
Yet loath to lose my muse’s light,
Sought and then caught and all for naught
If I were to renounce my chosen route
Here at the close of a dwindling youth
For a path of wage that leads to nights
Away from the cold in the poet’s plight.
Alone I struggled in the dark ring doubt
Coiling the chill of the Achensee
Out from the lake to lace my heart
In loops of time and ice-drip dread
Of hobbling men my fright had wed –
Failed and frail and lying pale
Alone in a cot on a dying day –
To a fate of my own if I delayed
Too long on this path that I had led.
And then he came up and quietly said:
What lies ahead?
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