Young Poet Category   
1st prize

Everyone
by Jared Osborn (Catskill)

Sky takes away everyone’s problems.
Sea brings calmness to everyone.
Dawn guides everyone to a good day.
Sun tells everyone to get up and move.
Dusk follows everyone to bed
Moon looks over everyone at night.

2nd Prize

The Sun’s Big Mistake 
by Katherine Colten (Catskill)

The sun watches the trees dance
from day to night from dusk to dawn.
But every morning the sun dreams to
dance with the trees, grass, and
mountains and to sway with the water and sea.
The stars tell her that they can bring
her to earth.
The sun crashes down on the earth
But now she saw she made a big mistake.
The sun asked the stars to please let
her go back!
The sun still remembers today up in
space of the big mistake.


3rd Prize

The Cat Stuck in My Hat
By Michael Jimenez (Catskill)

There is a cat in my hat,
Who invited a bat,
Who went in my hat.
That the cat and the bat
Started to chat about Matt.
Then the cat who invited the bat
Who talked about Matt
Invited a rat in my hat.
The rat went tat
Then the cat was a liar
So I set the hat on fire.

Honorable Mention

arts poetica
by Tom Corrado (Voorhesville)

Adult Category
1st Prize 

Directions for Success
By Paul Horton Amidon (Albany)

Have the child lead you
to the place the coin was lost.
Ask where the search ended,
where the small face
wet with tears
saw the shadow of despair,
turned for home.

Look at the ground intently;
speak of a second effort,
the probability of discover,
in a voice soothing
as the voice a hillside
gives to the water of a stream.

As hope returns,
young yes brighten,
point to a place
a short distance away
as – this is the critical part –
your fingers close
on another such coin
in your pocket.

Keep talking, lest the sound
of a loose coin be heard
near your feet
Opportunity stands beside you.
Choose the moment

2nd Prize

Spring Song
By Janice P. Egry (Verbank)

A symphony plays on this March Sunday.
Lost in the lounge chair on my deck
I have a front row seat
in burning rays of brilliant sun.

A helicopter pounds pedal tones
of basso profound, as comings and goings
of small planes drone
in staggered tenor voices.

Crows perched in sugar maples
caw-caw strident alto staccatos
and in eave troughs above my head
melting snow ripples out soprano melodies.

It’s the first warm day since October,
sixty degrees chasing a greedy winter.
Spring is determined to succeed,
I know it will become relentless.

I can hear it coming
in the composition of inevitability.


3rd Prize

The Lake Turns Over
By Marion Menna (Glenmont)

Funny how you think you know
things and then something new comes
unheard of, unthinkable

She was saying how bad it smelled
when the lake turns over every fall
and dead things litter the strand

The lake turns over? the lake turns over?
I see this mass of water rise up
and out of its bed

Hand in the air for a m oment
then flip itself head over heels
and back to bed again

Like a bowl of jellied consommé
or an omelet, not quite ready
or an ogre wakened by roosters

The science is quite simple
in the summer, lake surfaces
heat up, lower layers cool

Fall comes, cools the surface
it becomes denser, sinks
to the bottom and mixes

Decomposing plants, algae
and other matter rise up
clarity decreases

which means it smells bad
and the water is muddy
how very alive it all is

how like our own lives