Barbara Ballé won the 2021 Award for Writing with a Nature Theme
Photo by Robert S. Schemenauer
Ward Pycock won the 2021 Award for Writing with a Kamloops (& Area) Theme
Photo courtesy of Ward Pycock
Both the Kamloops (& Area) Theme and Nature Theme Awards consist of a cash prize, a certificate, and a press release issued to local media. Accompanying each Award is a cash donation to the Interior Authors Group to support its growth and educational activities. The yearly deadline for submissions is 21 March. The Awards are privately sponsored and funded, but are only for members of the IAG. There is no fee to enter.
For more about the Interior Authors Group, please see https://interiorauthorsgroup.wordpress.com/ .
FOLLOWING ARE THE TWO 2021 WINNING SUBMISSIONS
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-SLEEP MY SORROW, a poem by Barbara Ballé
-SKY LADDERS, a novel by Ward Pyco
Copyright for the submissions remains with the authors. Permission to reproduce a piece or to use it in whole or part in any form, written or electronic, must be obtained from the author.
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SLEEP MY SORROW...
A poem by Barbara Ballé
Sleep my sorrow sleep, do not wake my heart.
Spring’s northern wind brought her blustery breath upon us.
Fooled, but not for long...
Soon, red tulips rang turbid bells of grief.
And sombre violins wept...
Ashen keel of the moon rammed into the sky,
bleeding violet dawn.
And sombre violins wept...
Chickadees wove songs on fronds of firs
in passion of green.
Dense, sunlit pollen drifted upon us;
an angry god moping over his harvest?
Nostalgically, we walked after breakfast,
seeing the North Thompson
forcing the wind to a long-distance race.
Cautiously, starting cordial chats with others;
the spring made us wait...
We heard the wind raising its voice,
abating and falling asleep on our doorstep.
Isolated, in solemn incognito,
flashing our eyes, we morphed in to
blind, bleak beacons of hope.
Alas, the excessive heat of August kept us tense...
How long the count-down until dawn?
Jade fronds of blooming branches of firs
on the seesaw of racing wind,
modified to meditating poised statues,
our new stand-in friends.
Deeper, onto the green, the ponderosa pines
kept oozing ochre sap, but dehydrated
dreaming of rain.
And so were we...
Reluctantly, it came.
Pattering against our skylight:
resonating throughout the house,
varying its insistent energy,
another funeral hymn, for whom?
Outside, through our kaleidoscope,
grass was boastful and the flowers gleamed.
Wearing forged smiles we boldly met September.
Enduring oppressive heat under the roof of a green parasol,
absorbed in the sounds of sparrows,
chickadees and a grey squirrel’s steadfast chirping.
The tiny critter didn’t appear too often, how could she?
There were five gloomy, black crows
guarding the grounds:
living in gossiping firs,
menacingly squawking among ponderosa pines,
lurking in weeping long-armed juniper.
Toward the end of the Indian summer
dainty damselflies kept coming,
beaming a colour of beauty – reduced to ashes of our youth.
Floating among us, exerting embellished wings,
blissfully unaware...
Grasshoppers visited our white front door,
the fronds of Russian sage, napping in the sun
among the aroma of fading lavender blossoms,
hugging the last whims of summer...
Autumn, waiting already,
was grasping the reigns of her winds,
trees endlessly shedding their leaves,
framing our street with copper.
Mockingly rustling its gold-plated face.
Seizing us in the shimmer of eternity,
moonlight among the stars, mere ash,
in the wilful wind by our stumbling feet.
Sleep my sorrow, sleep, do not break my heart.
The Sorrow
No more nightmares of being shot at dawn!
The Poet
Oh, the malicious pain of our dying,
the naked sorrow of those left behind.
Oh, the sunken ships of our lives in the abyss.
The Sorrow
The winds will dissolve your roads,
the stone of silence embrace you with moss,
but the white dahlias of your demise will brighten
all paths to your forgotten graves.
The Poet
Sorrow, do me a favour,
inform death that I need more time.
Tell him that I dream to write and write to dream,
studying Greek, learning from Sappho to sing.
From SKY LADDERS
A novel by Ward Pycock
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April 17, 1917.
James stretched his head about, hoping to see something of his
hometown. Kamloops was as peaceful as paradise. Besides the darkness,
buildings blocked his view of any of the residential neighbourhoods, so he
imagined his street. He saw a dark roadway, lit by a few streetlights,
illuminating the sapling maple trees he planted last autumn before he left for
Vancouver—ironically by train—to sign up. The baby leaves should be
unfurling in front of the house any week now that spring reached the valley,
fluttering protectively about his home with Lana. As he scanned the area
around the rail yard, he saw stone and steel and nothing living.
What was she doing? He glanced at his pocket watch. She would have
finished all the chores and taken care of the horses. He missed his pair of
steeds. They were not pets, but he missed them fondly—he raised them both
from the time they were foals. He imagined them easily.
Lana would have completed her evening’s ablutions except for her hair.
She would be brushing it at this time of the night and he envisioned it flowing
over shoulders only partially covered by a satin nightdress. Lana sat at her
new vanity, the one he built for her, as a wedding anniversary present. He
watched each stroke of her hair, as if he stood right behind her and she
smiled back at his reflection in her mirror, the yellow glow of the bedroom
lanterns enhancing her beauty and mystery, framing her in a beautiful
portrait. Behind, turned down flannel sheets invited her to wander through
the sleeping landscapes of her nightly dreams.
Although James had returned to Kamloops, and his wife and home were
only a few kilometres away, darkness, as vast as all of nighttime itself,
engulfed him. He could not see her—she did not know he was so close either.
They lived in the same moment, in the same town, but an invisible war in far
off Europe caused them to live separate existences—he a soldier, she a civilian
nurse—with no place for him in her life, except in her dreams. She was a
dream, existing only as an ethereal vision in his mind.
He didn’t think about how much he longed for Alana, until the sudden
proximity to her forced an inrush of desire—to hold her, see her, love her.
Being this close, but unable to reunite with her physically pained him far
more intensely than any injury he had ever endured. Her absence cut his soul
with a wound that would not heal.
The train whistle called, like his patriotic duty. Millions of soldiers
shoved their obligations to their wives and families aside, so too did James.
When he enlisted and signed his attestation paper, he suspended his life and
gave his body over completely for King and country, for the absolute love of a
free world, one he would enjoy with Lana again someday, here in his
hometown, Kamloops … yet not tonight.
