WINONA, Minn. – The Winona Fine Arts Commission has chosen nine short poems and snippets to be stamped into sidewalks around town in coming months. The announcement coincides with National Poetry Month, said Carrie Frederich, commission chair. This is the second year of the commission’s Winona Poetry Walk project to celebrate local writers and enrich the city aesthetically and intellectually. Frederich said the walk again will include a work by a professional poet of renown or public title, this year Kimberley Blaeser, former Wisconsin poet laureate. Blaeser’s selection will be announced later, Frederich said.

Blaeser. Former poet laureate of Wisconsin to join Winona bards.

Judges

Selections were judged by a citizen panel with expertise in the arts and poetry: Dante DeGrazia, John Kerr, Caitilin McCoy, LaShara Morgan, Kathy Peterson, Paul Stern, Tricia Wehrenberg.

Jerome Christenson

Botany 101 / For an hour I sat beside a plant. / It soaked up photons. / Spit out oxygen. / All so indifferent to my watching.

Michael William Doyle

The limestone bluffs get up and / Shake their shaggy manes

Dan Eastman

Cast with grace / And etched in silence, / Each moment harbors / An eternal glance, / As imagination . / Encircles the world.

Parker Forsell

it’s like we found / the beginning again /  lying there in the dew grass / two kids / out beyond themselves / making no excuses / for what we’d become

Nancy Kay Peterson

Sky defines flat land / except in corn fields / where towering stalks / guzzle water and leave cracked cement earth. / Wave your way out between / cutting-edged leaves, / snagging thistles, / stumbling stones, / to return to safe prairie. / Only sky surrounds you.

Marcia Ratliff

it’s morning in Winona / and somewhere east of here / a baker drops a donut into hot lard / and somewhere west of here an eagle dips / over the spillway / looking for breakfast / and here you are — / right here, bravely moving / into the day

Sabrina Schlichting

Petrichor memories pull me / in reminding me what it’s like to begin again / and I let the falling rain envelop me. / I am free. / So beautiful. / So serene. / Neverland was a dream.

Steve Schild

Mother /  Rhythm of rocker, / wicker chair, / comforting creak / on hardwood floor, / bygone yawn of sleeping babe / who need cry in the night no more.

Lucas Stangl

mwmf haiku / drums guitars vocals / reverberate off brick walls downtown comes alive