Poetry Slam

 My UU church held a poetry slam on Saturday.  I had no idea what it was, but I decided to go anyway and find out.  I took several poems with me that I had written over the years.

Apparently, when I signed up I clicked the button designating myself as a poet.  Good thing I had some poems with me.  

 There were actually only 10 people signed up as poets- me being one of them.

I was not at all nervous when I stood in front of the crowd and read.    At the end, all of the poets were invited up on the stage and learned what the judges thought.

Guess what?!   I won a $25.00 gift card.  A total surprise!

That's me in the purple shirt. 

Here's what I read:

My Grandfather’s Grave

 

In the fifties, my father took my mother to the family farm in Kjorefjord and showed her where his father is buried.  He said “there, that’s the hole my father is in” and he  walked away.  Almost a lifetime later I stood at the foot of that same grave and felt so alive and connected.  Here lies a piece of me, or I a piece it, the earth, of him, my father’s father. That same day, I stood in the room my grandfather was born in.  I closed my eyes and in my imagination, I heard his first cries.  I cried.  I was born in that room that day.  And at that grave on that farm in that village.   I was whole and complete and I drank wine and ate cheese and strawberries under the midnight sun.  Home.