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Winning Poems: The Moods of Summer

I gathered all my powers

to periphrase my ignorance of flowers.

Our conversation was unreal

Tulips turned to plastic on my tongue.

When you took off for Paris

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the propellors seemed to go backwards.

Like an unleashed top I foundered

in drawn-out entropy, unstable, grounded.

Paris changed you more than you changed Paris.

You came home the portrait of a lady,

dropping names of galleries, trite

mementoes, in your train,

forcing me to see you in the new light

of your mother, beaming forth delight.

As we walk by the river

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