HONORABLE MENTION

Karen Carter

Oklahoma City, OK

Karen Carter, Ph.D., is a creative writer and a published author in the

academic and free-lance writing fields. She teaches on an adjunct basis in

the Humanities Division at Rose State College, a community college in

Midwest City, Oklahoma. Currently, she is working under assignment on

book-length projects. She loves poetry and writes prose poetically.

The Bridge

Green, hefty branches

shaped like heads of broccoli

from summer’s early garden,

adorn patches of land

on two sides of a lazy river.

A stream cries

for wooden planks caressed with rope

to greet an adventurous traveler,

to commune with the tree tops,

to reach hands to the sky,

to walk deliberate steps in moccasined soles,

and to tip a safari hat to nature’s blossoms.

Fresh air absorbs morning dew.

Birds chirp to announce the season,

the closing of the gap

between unknown territories

beckoning the wanderer

to ponder fields of grandeur.