1st, ShortCategory 2008 - Christopher North
Geese in Market Crowd
Not a honk, gabble or mutter
as the six thread through chaos.
The mountains seem to be liquefying
this damp and blustery morning,
the sky is hesitant and lacks confidence -
so the geese are a certainty in what is shapeless.
They waddle, chittering in concentration -
their foolish feet, their pert rears
an order in the hopeless tumble
of junk mathematics around them.
Judge's comments
'Geese in Market Crowd' shows just how much you can get into a poem and (more importantly) how much you can leave out. It’s an amazingly skilful piece: not a wasted word, and they’re all the right words. The setting is vast, confusing: the geese, a symbol of order. The whole is so economically done that all the ingredients work together, and every word has earned its passage.