Grace Vermeer
Best Rhyming Poem 2010 Utmost Christian Poetry Contest $300
About this Christian Poet:
When I stopped trying to be the saviour of Vernon Street and started to look at my own brokenness, I began a journey toward change which also led me to writing and a love of poetry. I have three grown children and live in Sarnia, Ontario with my husband.
About this Poem:
This was my first attempt at a form poem. Someone told me that when we limit ourselves to the rules and structure of a form, we sometimes say things in a way we wouldn’t have said otherwise. I was influenced by the poet, Wendell Berry, whose words “the winter world of loss and grief” gave me a starting point to express my own experience.
The Snow Crocus
The winter world of loss and grief died slow.
It seemed like years. I breathed small breaths; I slept
in cold dark earth, a stone beneath the snow.
Had I chosen this, my blindness? But no
voice spoke, nothing answered, nothing except
the winter world, loss and grief. I died slow,
smelled decay in naked graves, groped below
the rotten shrouds. Who was I now? I wept
in cold dark earth. A stone beneath the snow,
I slept grief's sleep while a purple shadow
began to stir inside my dreams and crept
out of that winter world. My grief died slow,
ice thawed in my veins, green began to flow.
I struggled up through sodden leaves and left
the cold dark earth—A stone beneath the snow?
No! My body unfolds, dripping with snow.
Green songs stream through my throat. Shall I forget
the winter world, the loss? Grief dies so slow
in cold dark earth, a stone beneath the snow.
Copyright ©2010 by Grace Vermeer