Writing Contest Winner: Green Gables: A Golden Opportunity
The following poem was submitted to the Greener Together Writing Contest, May 2020. Thank you to all who participated and we hope you enjoy this winning submission from the 18+ poetry category: Write a poem about your most treasured place outside.
by Allison Fradkin
You are raspberry cordially invited
to Prince Edward Island,
home of carrot-top-of-the-line
literary heroine Anne Shirley.
The landscape will instantly intoxicate you,
not unlike the currant wine
that accidentally inebriated
Anne’s bosom friend Diana Barry.
Your eyes will stretch wider
than embroidery hoops,
your heart will flutter
like the eponymous trees in the Windy Poplars novel,
and you will experience love at first site-with-an-E,
as Anne would prefer.
The vastly verdant vibrancy will feel all-inclusive:
a bucolic frolic
of gumball green,
Girl Scout green,
stuffed Stegosaurus green;
each shade freckled with flowers
and illuminated by a sun with rays for days.
Inlayed in this mosaic of archaic perfection,
you will feel like a brooch that’s pinned perfectly in place.
The discovery that you and nature are closer
than the pleats in Anne’s pigtail braids
will be met with
justifiable jubilance,
because it is all so
thoroughly thrilling,
unimaginably spirited,
excruciatingly winsome,
Anne then some.
