Arts on the Bayou

Bards on the Bayou Poetry Contest

"For 40 years, the Bayou Preservation Association has worked hard to protect, restore and preserve the bayous that drain into Galveston Bay. Some of our local bayous are lush green ribbons of slow moving water, dense vines, and tall trees. Others are large concrete gutters. Too many are littered with trash."

The Bayou Preservation Association, Spiky Palm, and Art Institute of Houston Poetry Reading Series are sponsoring "Bards on the Bayou" a poetry contest designed to promote local poets and educate people about the rich history, wildlife and natural beauty of our bayous.

And the winners are:

First Place -

Bayou By Night
    by Carolyn Tourney Florek, Houston, Texas

By night the bayou collects street light –
Amber glows beneath a blue-black sky.

This is when the dogs pull me into the night
for a walk along the bayou until sleep wells

As a slow wet spell cast on all living things.
Herons sleep in the watery shadows,

One eye open to the sleeping world;
another screeches invisible in flight.

Fish, like parallel dark crystals align
themselves in the drowsy current;

All drift in wary sleep among the waking
nocturnal creatures coming to fish.

I walk home to find the children;
gently net them in, unfold them in their beds.

Then the dogs will lie down, curl beside us,
sleeping warmly as fur-coated moons.

Second place -

Creekside Garden Reflection
    by Glynn Monroe Irby, Clute, Texas

Near dusk
of that sun-filled day,
fading tomato blossoms
brushed against our shoulders
while we spread soil
and fertilizing foam
into the clay banks
of our cascading garden.

With morning glory vines
crawling up the trunks
of surrounding willow oaks,
a barred owl dropped
to my zucchini patch
and captured a banded snake.

Clarity is often conceived
in ordinary moments,
just like the approach
of that creekside night –
when quick clusters
of chimney swifts
whisked along the creek edge,
and the last barn swallow skimmed
above the sluggish olive latte-water,
singing her ecstatic song
as she solitarily vanished
into starlight.

Third place -

Nothing Doing
    by Joe Barnes, Houston, Texas

The lesser cousins of rivers
  and lazier siblings of creeks,
    bayous are going nowhere fast

and enjoying their journey
  from some place unimportant

    to another hard to remember,

nowhere being not half bad,
  when the current dwindles
    to a sleeper’s easy exhalations

and afternoon shadows creep
  like kudzu across the mosquito-
    stippled surface so brown,

so perfect in its indolence,
  that even night can only deepen
    it to a darker shade of mud.

Through sometimes swollen by rain
  and roused to a fit of temper
    as brief as it is violet,

bayous are otherwise peaceable,
  a fit refuge for human spirits
    overwhelmed by high dams

teetering above canyons
  and exhausted by even the idea
    of a canoe shooting rapids,

not to mention those monstrous
  bearers of cargo and silt –
    the Niles and Mississippis,

the Ganges and Rhines – that carve
  continents and civilizations.
    in their imperial path.

History is made elsewhere
  by water and people who have
    better things to do with their time

than meander through marshland
  or pretend to fish with friends
    while finishing off a case of beer

so cold it makes the teeth ache
  and listening for the world’s noise
    ambitions, fraught with loss –

for the moment at least still
  safely beyond the furthers reach
    of our hearing and happiness.

With honorable mention to:

City on the Bayou
    by Kathleen Cook, Houston, Texas

A city founded on false promises
anchorless, floating,
on coastal, malarial plain with

no sea or hill to prevent
descent, sliding with all
in it, to glory

or doom, a city of
strivers, pioneering on
conduits of steel and word

to shores unknown,
unknowable, they ran
without regard.

The city was green and grew
greener, profuse with spring
flowers and winter, too,

as the globe became warmer
as bayou waters dropped,
rose and yet rose, in

long cement sleeves.


Wading in Slowly
    by Lauren Martini, Houston, Texas

Swamp syrup,
   slow
  ur-liquid
   flow,
opaque as life’s purpose,
thick blood of mystery,
steeped in a code
spelled out in chemistry,
servant to entropy,
midwife to genesis,
quiet wet chocolate riot
of randomness…

When I put my foot in,
the bulb of my brain
remembers the fin,
the dark and the distant
sleep deep in the smell
of this bayou, and I
need to feel
what it has to tell.


Departure – Buffalo Bayou
    by John E. Rice, Houston, Texas

This tall, warm wall of steel, here
at my fingertips, moves almost
imperceptibly as heavy root-like
ropes are suddenly slacked and
cast away. As light as a breeze –

blown empty eggshell, the ship
breaks its bond with the quay. Her
swinging hull and the stolid pier
form a vee widening as the water
roils and boils between them. A

great bronze propeller chunks and
churns, kicking life into another
voyage. Last lines loosed, the ship
is free. All gone 1203 writes an
impassive clerk and turns to other

work.        A sense of loss and
disconnection hands limp and heavy
in the humid air. How quickly the
huge ship shrinks in perception as
she slips into the first bend in the

bayou – and disappears. Her deep
voice moans across the mudflats,
making more memories than friends.