2024 Poetry Contest
Honoring Earth Day

Sponsored by Huntsville Master Chorale and
Huntsville-Madison County Public Library

2024 Winning Poems

Unity
by Laurel Howard, Grissom High School

Half a trace of gratitude
for existing in this space
Half-conscious of the rosy glow
that blooms across the face
Of cliffsides and meadows
and marshland and sea
Half-lit by the dawn and half-ruined by me

You can’t separate yourself
From intertwining hopes and binding fear
You can’t separate yourself
From everything that’s keeping you here

Tears don’t replenish a river
but still we allow them to flow
Spiral against a hurricane
but winds of change refuse to slow

What sort of war is this
Fighting the stagnation brought by fear
The catastrophic loss is coming
As drowned voices scream that it’s already here

You can’t separate yourself
From the living and the dead you still hold dear
You can’t separate yourself
From everything that’s keeping you here

Straining away from the madness
The oceans that rise and the forests that fall
This earth is much older than your years of sadness
You cannot live enough to hold it all

Half a moment’s pause
While the truth is sinking in
And the world is sinking under
Racing underneath your skin

For millennia of living
And for half-remembered days
Half-hopeful for the future
And half-sick of what it weighs

You can’t separate yourself
When being together makes us free
You can’t separate yourself
When everything is suffered under unity.