And the poetry winner is...I Would Bring A Lamb by Adele Evershed!

DarkWinter Lit is thrilled to announce that I Would Bring A Lamb by Adele Evershed was chosen during blind judging as the winning entry in our 4th Anniversary Poetry Contest by judge Hollay Ghadery! Thanks to all who entered the contest this year--we had more submissions than ever and it was an extremely talented field!

Congratulations also to our second-place winner Lawrence Moore for the poem Erasure Poem and Gerald Ewa, our third-place winner for the poem Music of Birds in Exile !

You can read Adele Evershed's beautiful and haunting winning entry below, and the rest of the shortlist and longlist will be featured on our special Shortlist/Longlist Saturdays feature, beginning next week! Congratulations again to Adele Evershed! And a huge thank you to Hollay Ghadery for doing such an excellent job!

I Would Bring a Lamb by Adele Evershed

Winterberries

under a blanket of snow,

all the missing children

That January,

emptied of everything,

I stayed home with only the moon for company.

I’d watched all through December

as it argued with the rain about—

how these things happen—

how it wasn’t my fault

until the rain stormed away in disgust

I ventured out

to feed the sheep—

the frost gossiping with my fingertips—

and I found a shiver of light

in the winter-stiff grass

and thought—maybe I can be forgiven

one of the flock pressed its nose to my palm

and in that touch

I remembered the lamb

But then the rain testified again

and the grass—and I—were flattened

Yet the sheep being much wiser than me

patiently waited

listening as the rivers sang the old hymns

the soil softened

and mushrooms broke the earth

scarlet waxcap—

the red I remember

from the war