By Robert Lucke
This is the ninth year former Big Sandy High School graduate Ellaraine Lockie has provided the English students at BSHS the opportunity to participate in the Walter Gerson Poetry Contest.
Each year Ellaraine Lockie judges students’ poetry, makes comments about the poems and awards students for their excellent poetry and participation. This year is no exception. There are several cash prizes and several honorable mentions.
Two teachers at Big Sandy high school have been involved in the poetry contest. Lauren Clampitt handled the Gerson poems for the first six years they were in existence. This is Kimberly Perry’s first year at handling the Big Sandy part of the contest.
Each year the students in grades 8 through 12 compose a poem. They are all mailed to Ellaraine Lockie in California. Lockie, a published poet whose poems appear monthly in “The Mountaineer”, makes her only requirement for the poems is that they be in free verse. She judges all of the poems, decides on three money winners and several honorable mentions and then mails them back. She funds the prizes each year from her own pocket. This is a very special cause for Lockie and so appreciated by the rest of us. The Big Sandy school has appreciated Lockie’s willingness to allow the contest each year.
Once again “The Mountaineer” will print all of the poems. Thanks to Big Sandy students, Ellaraine Lockie and Kimberly Perry for making our pages better!
Co- Third place was won by Senior, Alex Richter for “He and I”
He is the sappy summer that brings sunshine in and rips it back like a black hole.
He is the safest arms around me when I’m in the darkest alleyways of New York at 3am.
He is a warm thunderstorm and I get caught up in how it feels instead of how it looks.
He is the only thing that makes sense, but I have amnesia of the past.
He is the best and worst thing that has ever happened to me.
He knows my heart, how it flutters when he talks to me.
He hardly knows me when he isn’t around because it’s like coming down from a high.
He is the slightest bit of me that thinks I belong in a straight jacket with a perfect sense of reality.
He is the best and worst thing that has ever happened to me.
I am not myself completely with him.
I am not complete without him.
I am the shot in his heart when I finally leave.
I know it.
Couldn’t tell you what will happen, that’s the future and that’s all he wants from me; my future.
Couldn’t tell you why that is not appealing.
I always try, but I am not him.
I am the lead bird flying south, I flee the fastest.
I am a free monkey from the zoo of society and love.
I am not him.
I am too stubborn.
I am what makes love look bad.
I am pain.
I am not him.
