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p>Judge’s comments: Best free verse entry; particularly strong concluding envoy.

My computer glows with the claim of a science
teacher: that he could squeeze
seven of his students into a box, and,
given eight million years to do it, could count
enough 7-student boxes to match the earth
in volume; that our planet, one septillion
boxes big, could multiply by a million and still fit
snug inside the sun (though for now
they keep a safe ninety million miles apart); that if
our nine-ring solar system shrunk
small as a quarter (picture the sun on one side
throwing light from George Washington’s left
earlobe, and, on the other, bursting
from the proud eagle’s crotch, while Pluto
rolls around the corduroy rim), then
the Milky Way would be all India—
yes, from Kashmir standing with its head in the mists
of a broken borderline, down to where the rest
droops into the sea toward Sri Lanka,
jungles astir with tigers and elephants,
Taj Mahal and Calcutta slums
all blurry with people and cattle; that a dozen
zeros are required between the number
25 and the decimal to quantify
the mileage between our sun and its nearest
relative in a galaxy boasting some
three hundred billion such solar-system-coins
of every size, one collection of silver and copper
and nickel among two hundred billion
others the universe carries around as a purse.

For all that, I stood last summer in dark
Quebec wilderness by the edge
of a lake, the firmament spread over its quiet
surface, and the stars (some
buttoned to a loon’s back, shaking
their line from her throat) all
came to me, as they had come to David,
and Abraham before him,
beyond number, beyond reply.