Fourth Annual Wild Violet Writing Contest Winners (2006)
Poetry
— First Place
Judith Goldhaber is addicted to the sonnet. Her sonnet sequences have won numerous awards, including the Annie Finch Prize, the "In the Beginning was the Word" Literary Arts Contest, the Dancing Gaillard Sonnet Contest, and the Anna Davidson Rosenberg Award for Poems on the Jewish Experience.
Mea
Culpa
A Crown of Sonnets
By Judith Goldhaber
“A butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil can cause a tornado in Texas.”
i.
– Meteorologist Edward LorenzO yes, I’ve seen the headlines, heard the news:
NURSING INFANT SWEPT FROM MOTHER’S ARMS
NEAR AMARILLO TEXAS! Homes and farms
reduced to rubble, backyard barbecues
upended in the Baptist chapel’s pews —
And, yes, I’ve heard the rumors and alarms
spread by the gang of pundits and schoolmarms,
strident voices clamoring “J’accuse!”
Accuse? Who? Me? A black-and-orange butterfly,
genus Danaus, species plexippus,
inhabiting the green and mountainous
rain forests of Brazil . . . I wonder why
fate chose me for this monstrous kind of fame:
Those talking monkeys need someone to blame.ii.
Those talking monkeys need someone to blame
for earthquakes, war, tornadoes, fire and flood,
and though the planet’s swimming in the blood
of species that once flourished but became
extinct — ravaged and plundered in the name
of human progress, pinched off in the bud —
they have the insolence to fling their mud
at humble moths and butterflies! For shame!
My version of events needs be told:
I’ll skip the egg and caterpillar days
of childhood (since I find it never pays
to bore one’s friends with memories so old)
and start my story with the fragile cage
that held my nascent life: the pupal stage.
