This was my entry to the National Poetry Competition. I did not win, so you get to read what is, effectively, a loser’s poem. Lucky you.

A landscape made
for us, when we are not.
A delighted breeze rests
on benches named
to carry us on.

Nothing stirs the saplings.
The wind is mute,
no fruit falls
from this sober orchard raised
to grow, when we do not.

Neat and tender, shrines
of glib remembrance
to us, when we were us,
stud blackly the grass,
mushrooms in the light.

Small crowds gathered
round mute affection
will talk of them,
not us, when we are them,
and coo about bouquets.

And when they leave
this outsourced home
of veils and dim silence,
there is no trace
of us, when we were us.