Gratitude, such a small thing, yet so powerful.
Be thankful for what you have and why you have it,
be thankful for who you meet and why you met them,
and be thankful for who you are and what makes you YOU!
Gratitude doesn't have to be hard, just give a little thanks to those
who helped you to get where you are now, and those who will help
you get further along.

I am from the cold mornings of the first frost,
Where all the seasons feel like winter.
I’m from hundreds of elk crossing over the hills
Every morning at dawn,
Leaving their tiny footprints in the freshly fallen snow.

I’m from passing moose on the front lawns on the way to school
And half days so we can get out early to ski
I’m from the shuffling noise of ski boots inside the gondolas
And the hours upon hours of ski school lessons.

I’m from that feeling of cold toes and fingers,
The relief of taking off my ski boots at a rest stop
To ease my aching feet,
The hot cocoa slowly reviving me and warming up my insides.

I am from risking the blistering cold on your fingers
To sneak some gummy worms and marshmallows on the chairlift.
From giggling with my friends going up
As we tried to slide the snow off our skis,

Clanging them together hoping they wouldn’t fall off.
I’m from getting home and going out the back to the hot tub,
The sensation of being warm
But with the cold air and snowflakes blowing all around.
I’m from the coffee shop at the end of the street every day after school,
The feeling of the hot toasted bagel against the cool cream cheese.

I’m from Utah,
I’m from what makes all these things home.

Andrew Lilburn
Child Category Honorable Mention

Dad

Dad
safe, fun
gardening, learning, playing
I love my dad
always there

Evangeline Barton-Grimley
Child Category Honorable Mention

Grassy Spring Mountains

Grassy spring mountains
beautiful, sunny
flowering, sprouting, refreshing
the mountains covered in mustard flowers
beautiful

Maya Shaw Gale
Adult Category Honorable Mention

The Sacred Privilege to Feel

I live in this badass body
muscle, sinew, bone
talkin’ to me all the time
‘bout my connection to Earth
tree, water and stone
living in human sensation
a constant conversation
with vibration all around me
bird song wakin’ up my brain
more than facts that want to fill it
with stress or strain, oh heck
I could drown there if not for
coming back to solid ground
of this bodacious body
these pleasure pulsating rhythms
from walk, dance, run
even pain reminds me I have
the privilege to feel
taste/palpate the living music of real
all around me
don’t want to go too far afield
into thinking thoughts and theories
‘bout life’s what, why and how
when right here this body translates
everything into sultry, sensual savoring
of NOW, this moment of seeing
blue, green, golden light
a symphony of sound all day and night
singing my heart into syncopation
my bare skin stroked
by the wind, sea, sun
a friend’s enveloping hug
I live in this body
more than territory of mind
where I sometimes get lost
wander for too many hours
before coming back to the power
of barefoot on cool cement floors,
silky sand, crunchy grass,
heartbeat like an African drum
talking to me all the time in sass
never alone when I come back
home to this badass body
something wild and wondrous
always going on/something
so real, this sacred privilege
to feel!

Kimbrough Ernest
Adult Category Honorable Mention

Unbidden

it came to me
late in life,
this glimpse of tenderness

fierce and fleeting
as a teenage crush
it came to me

like a soft breeze
that I could not
schedule or direct

just only nudge
open a window
and allow in

My book is a world.
It has description which takes up my brain.
Turns it into a world into a graveyard into space?
It could be a real one it could be a fake. My book is a world it is a place.
Where I can be me and meet the characters face to face.
I can join the characters for adventure or live in sorrow and pain, my book is a world and helps describes what I am feeling.
My book is a world, happy, sad or scared I can have an adventure or simply be impaired.
Every day when I read whether I learn or I feel, I read to be me and not be ordeal.
My book is a world the world simply unfolds into a place around me a story is told.

Black tiles, and if I look long enough I can make them swim,
A game between me, myself,
And black tiles on the bathroom floor,
The only game to play when doubled over crying
Trying not to hurt so much,
Trying not to hate so much, but not that kind of hurt, not only.
My stomach contorting into new shapes,
I used to beg to die, beg God to die before I knew what
Either of those words meant
(Always one for melodrama.)
It used to scare her, what to do when
Waiting isn't painless.
I don't have that hurt anymore, not much anymore, but
I still shout that same sentiment.
Things stay the same, even if they change, even as they change
Nothing has truly changed.
Doubled over crying,
Arms, fingers like taut strings, trying to pull myself back into recognizable shapes,
Tears on black tiles on the bathroom floor,
Black tiles swimming.
Head banging,
I wanted her to notice me.
Pity is a thing one has to earn.
Sitting on a windowsill and thinking about concrete,
To young to operate outside of the allowed.
Secrets behind desks, screaming in pencil,
Erasable.
Nothing I've said has ever been true.
A home never to be lived in, towers
The neighbor cut the wires with safety scissors and
Gonna conjure up this time.
Nothing I've said has ever not been lies.
Every corner holds something for her, and it comes back to this, every time.
Before this I hadn't known her voice
And I said her name,
Tried to call her off and she didn't hear me,
Her eyes were filled with red and hate and hurt,
I need to be called off.
Cutting comments, I always know just what to say.
The sweet aftertaste of a fight I didn't want to win.
Someone was always going to get hurt.
Acid stains on black tiles,
Black tiles on the bathroom floor,
Tear stains in the grout between the tiles on the bathroom floor,
Memorizing the patterns of the tiles on the floor.
Someone was always going to get hurt.

We speak—hard white seeds,
little waxing moons
that slip

into turned soil
like polished stones
into a child’s pocket.

Pot bean,
succotash,
soup.

Our farmer
sowed us on
the coastal plain,

stood at the rumps
of his three bays
that ploughed the fields,

obedient troika
even his young sons
could drive.

The fields, cupped
on three sides
by mountains,

on the fourth—open
to the loamy ocean
with its tides of till and sow.

Buttery, earthy,
100 years ago
from this unlikely place

we fed most
of the world.
People were crazy for us.