Winning Poem, 54-Hour Thanksgiving Poetry Contest: Thank you for the shivering, Jeffrey Rensch.

I am pleased to announce that the winner of the Thanksgiving Poetry Contest is Jeffrey Rensch for "Thank you for the shivering." Jeffrey has been writing poetry for 50 years.  He is not a big fan of free verse. Previous poems of his on Poems for Persons of Interest include "Being" and "Carol of disarray."

Thank you for the shivering

The sunlight stayed but lost its floor of heat.
What heat there was had nothing under it,
felt appliqué. It didn’t issue out
of some great, underlying store,
some as if molten core
of comfort – but was fine to be so cool.
Let us take comfort from what might have been
pain but was anything but pain.


I thank you for the shivering,
I like the change. I want to and I do.
I’m shivering and so are you.
The summer lethargy sweeps down into
I don’t know where, the heat goes who knows where.
We have to be okay not to be there.

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