Yesterday, I won 1st prize in the Nambucca Valley Writer’s Group Poetry competition 🙂 In case you don’t fully comprehend the magnitude of this wondrous event, this is the first writing competition I have ever won…and the first trophy 🙂
I wrote this poem at the beginning of the year in a time of drought. My partner and I had separated, and I felt my own parched barrenness mirrored the landscape.
This is my poem:
The Rainmaker
She was parched
Like a fertile land in drought.
Her rivers had run dry
Her wells had emptied.
Grass crisped beneath her feet.
In her dreams sometimes
A cool, moist breeze would blow
Fine misted droplets across her face
As she lay cushioned on soft grass.
A longing, evaporated in the heat of the day.
A familiar stranger appeared out of the blue.
She felt different around him; charged.
In her mind she called him the Rainmaker;
Great clouds, flashing and thundering
Roiled in his wake: electricity.
But she had been too dry for too long
And his rain slid off her skin,
Running down her body in dusty trails
Forming pools of muddy water at her feet
And evaporating in trails of steam.
Heat crackled about her
Like dry lightning in a bushfire…
Yet it seemed to only stoke his longing.
The current between them pushed and pulled:
He needed her fire like she needed the rain.
He knew of a secret place where the Earth
Kept her green things and her water;
A space of cool, cool beauty –
The sacred water-hole which never ran dry.
She sank beneath the silken water, deep and clear.
Sinking, something broke open inside of her;
A sluice gate of emotion opened
And broke her apart, water
Flowing into her like love.
And she sighed in its silken caress.
Her skin became silky
Her hair became smooth
She felt lush and juicy
Like a freshly drenched forest…
Or a woman re-claimed.
– Sara Foley
2014
The Rainmaker
Congratulations for being recognized for creating a wonderful poem! That also looks like a fun trophy to have won!
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Congratulations 🙂 Great poem. Fabulous imagery.
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Thank you much!
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excellent! well done
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This is so cool, congratulations! I’m loving all the imagery in there but I think my favorite line is “grass crisped beneath her feet”- I can already hear and feel it. 🙂
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Ah! That’s my favourite line too 🙂 thank you 🙂
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Beautiful, Sara! Such an elegant, sensual, heartfelt poem. You certainly deserve that wonderful trophy.
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Elegant! One of my very favourite words, applied to me!!! Swoon 🙂 Thanks Robin, your words of praise mean a lot to me xo
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Woot, woot! You rock… so does your poem… and your trophy… and your huge smile!
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Thanks Dawn – and right, I really don’t think I could have smiled any bigger than that 🙂 Apparently my face as the winner was called out was priceless lol 😀
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Such an incredible moment! I’m so happy for you, Sara!
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