Poetry Contest Winner: Daryl Wocknitz

Daryl Wocknitz

Honorable Mention 2008 Canadian Christian Poetry Contest (Spring): $50

About this Christian Poet:
Daryl Wocknitz was born in White Rock, British Columbia. The youngest of three brothers, he was blessed with a “relatively” normal family: a mother who adored him and a father who worked hard, so he would be well. Diagnosed with a short attention span and an off the scale IQ in elementary school, the subsequent finding that he was also a manic-depressive-schizophrenic led inexorably to one conclusion...the boy was a born poet! His only accomplishment of note has been finding God at the tender age of eighteen: “AD ASTRA PER ASPERA”

Thaw

Our shattered northern heart begins to sag,
as solar kisses become
perpendicular.

Sparking faintly in the growing day,
the arms of aurora wave in vain,
celestial semaphore falling before the rising sun.

A grey haze pursues the solitary spaces,
bear white ice
lost to mud.

Quad and 4x4 usurp sled and snowmobile,
while mosquitoes swarm
to madden the soggy, sodden, land.

The sons of Adam have failed this place,
this divine eye gazing through space,
this floating, frozen, water ground lense of blinding perfection.

Shrinking cap of wisdom, prophet to the race,
for Jurassic coin of gold and steel,
our boreal canary dances on a steaming hotplate

Beneath the shaded ark of winter
spring clouds collect,
and a voice of rest calls through the falling rain.

With raven locks circling leather moon faces,
the children of snow and sky
search for God
in a puddle.