like bits of the past or dusty snowflakes
glides sideways slightly toward the ground
while the present rain falls light and straight.
The pollen is more visible in its odd movement
and slowness than in any difference in color
from the rain that falls, both passing the pink
asbestos-sided garage, itself a bit from the past
that differs so much from the white-sided
garages lining the alley. Don’t buy a place
with asbestos shingles, her late father said
thousands of days ago. It’s won’t hurt you unless
you remove it. Removing it can kill you, though.
She’d listened: this garage is her landlords’,
themselves throwbacks from the past, sideways, distant.

—Karen Middleton

JUDGE’S COMMENT: '"Tree Pollen' is crisp and to the point. More could be searched out and made of the whole."

POET’S STATEMENT: “In ‘Tree Pollen’ I wanted to see whether haiku-influenced imagery could be used in a sonnet to make something ‘one’ or coherent, because that is the way the experience of seeing these bits of pollen, the garage, felt. I'm very grateful for all I have learned about poetry and revision from Margaret Rozga and the other poets in her writing classes and workshops.”