Among starry fields and taped-shut playgrounds
drifting pink petals and long lines for bread
empty shelves in the grocery, speed up in the factory
and a mounting count of the dead.

Among soft summer nights and slow days of waiting
when bars are crowded and school rooms are shut
when libraries ache for the turning of pages
and the budget for dancing is first to be cut.

Below the streak of a comet and the flash of a rifle
the sleek gleam of neon and shacks in the park.
I've lived seventy years and what can I give you?
A shrug and a flame and a song in the dark.

Judge’s Comments:

The loose form of this poem is an appropriate match for its weary, yet memorable descriptions. I like the way a few well-chosen details (''taped-shut playgrounds," "long lines for bread") work to establish a place that seems both familiar and foreign but is actually just the "way we live now." The last stanza's haunting contrasts (the comet and the rifle, neon and shacks)merge into a plaintive cry: ''what can I give you?" whose ultimate answer comes quickly: "A shrug ahd a flame and a song in the dark." There's something about those three things (especially that "song in the dark") that we understand better this year.