Contest Title: Long Shadows Poetry Contest
Sponsor: Craig Cornish
Deadline: Wednesday, October 29, 2025
Poem Title: The Surveyor of Dusk
Late Texas summer, wet heat and mosquitos,
running each evening, preparing for boot.
Past the few houses in my small country town,
past the people, past the sound,
running my past into the graveled ground.
The sun was low, a blood-red fruit in the sky,
casting my lunging shadow before me
on the dusty gravel finger of road.
I and my companion shadow strode
to Richland Creek where I would rest my load.
Each day I ran through the silent shadows,
alone and relishing my strength and youth,
pitting myself against my own best time,
enjoying the heat, sweat, and even the grime
of the dusty shadowed gravel road rime.
My shadow was joined in silent watch
one evening as I pushed my youthful endurance
by a heart-faced barn owl with glowing eyes
who brought a stutter to my steps
and a shock to my eyes.
Silently staring with shadow of his own,
his golden eyes still keep me company
in dreams and shadow memory
reminding me of a youth so temporary.
I was raised, like many others, on the wrong side of the tracks.
Parents poor, thru generations, hopelessly, broke their backs.
The holes in our walls, patched, with mud and road kill skins.
Our roof made up from cardboard boxes and corrugated tins.
We ate old, ice cold, cockroach stew, tho pigged out on toad.
The rusty bucket, we used out back, lovingly called commode.
As a young lad, I went bad, ran with wild gangs in the streets.
But soon, found myself running, with drunks, liars, and cheats.
In time, untrusted, got busted, cuz I was the one who went in.
The Judge, graveled, quickly gaveled, got five years in the pen.
In one cage, pent up rage, every day had to fight for my life.
Dreading showers, rival powers, and a toothbrush for a knife.
Made up my mind, when I got out, to fly straight as an arrow.
Like a fool, was hard to get by, on just the straight and narrow.
My life's been no picnic, it's true, but I won't sing a sad song.
Now busted again, back in the pen, I'm sure I probably belong.
When beauty’s gone bye bye and slack flesh becks
Jowls, crow’s feet, graveled voice and turkey necks
Too old to be a narcissist
what’s left is a pacifist
*Tender genteel haters do not make good peaceniks!
In the old graveled alley, overgrown with weeds,
at footfall, locusts sprang and leaped,
triggering a riot.
But soon their swelling motion
subsided like fried popcorn on a skillet.
At the Des Moines River’s Road End
There was a sharp tricky right bend
Prickly pines there were ready to defend
Graveled middle, a modern MODOT trend
Weeds that flittering faeries often tend
Mushroom homes, upon whom elves defend
Mother nature sat on haunches to mend
Torn sage weeds, beavers had chewed to extend.
My Road
By: Miracle Man
9/26/2024
My road in life, by choice, I have traveled,
without any vision of where it might end.
Many miles were smooth, some were graveled,
with unforeseen things I had to contend.
But early on my miles began to turn sour,
and while young in years I became perplexed.
Without reason I found myself looking glower,
not understanding why I was feeling so vexed.
But then one day, still seeking an answer,
and spending many days just slumming.
At twenty-eight I was told that I had cancer,
and I couldn’t fathom what was forthcoming.
I felt like a hitcher on the highway thumbing,
I accepted Jesus’ hand and gave him control.
Faith became mile one on my road to becoming,
I embraced for my life, God’s long desired goal.
Was 28 when Born Again, 85 now.
Thank you Jesus
Jump, thump, six graders jump
from stone to pebbly stone.
Chirp chirp the robin flies
Across the sky alone.
Crunch chunch the graveled feet,
Sh. . . shoo, a breathy whisper,
Hard, cold bench for a seat,
Rough wood, perhaps a splinter.
Puh, puh, puh, a boy spitting,
Mosquito slap
A girl is hitting.
Scarlet leaves on willowly stem
Dance in the crisp fall air.
I hear a chuckle.
Is it he
Playing over there?
The last bright orange, Autumn mums
Await their yearly demise.
A glance at my watch.
Oh, no, it’s time,
I’m thinking as I rise.
Fall day, sublime
God’s perfection.
What a task to study!
Until next time,
We’ll have to leave
Renewed, refreshed, unhurried.
~ Judy Bausch
It was a harsh, hard going season.
“It’s a dying winter, lad,”
he said, crunching words around,
a gnawed pipe stem.
Briefly embers sought a place to disappear.
Cinder gray eyes, set deep
into the crumpled grit of age.
A wry off-set smile.
Then one day he went back up
the clinker graveled path
to his small, low-roofed cottage,
with its squat, darkly puffing chimney,
oily cans, coal dusted kettles,
the fumy, over-stuffed parlor,
with its feet-warming, black,
fire-baked grate,
and one sooty cat.
Never to be seen again.
I can see a country road lightly graveled
Curved and lined with autumnal leaves
See myself walk hand and hand with my lover
This cool, crisp fall, in a gentle breeze
I see a warm hearth with dying embers
As the hot chocolate cups are finally drained
And sticky roasted marshmallow remnants
Are left upon the wire hangers to be used again
How long until we are joined in a perfect union
In a life to be loved for its fantastic form
A life where no problems linger
And a perfect love is newly born
Meandering along a graveled road
I saw an opossum with six young’uns
Hanging from her tail, quite a load
Meandering along a graveled road,
She was probably seeking a safer abode
I stopped, letting her pass, her luck runs
Meandering along a graveled road
I saw an opossum with six young’uns.
Written October 11, 2022
Down long lonesome roads of life, I traveled
only resting when I've grown weak and weary
or stumbling on memory lanes, pea graveled
that cause my mournful eyes to become teary.
My life is a library of memorable adventures.
I look back on those that brought me sorrows,
notwithstanding the rough and rocky ventures,
I’ve always looked forward to brighter morrows.
Courage always serves me as a faith restorer.
Then I'm off on another journey in which I pretend
that I'm a brave adventurist, a vagabond explorer,
hoping to discover serenity around the next bend.
Life offers us many of those up-and-down times,
but I have reached the crest of the highest hills --
sat there, meditated, and wrote poetic rhymes,
about sorrow's depth and how happiness fulfills.
I've learned how to be both malleable and shrewd,
relying on my senses and what nature will provide.
Life can be felicitous, and if I have the right attitude
I will accept my optimism to be a trusted guide.
October 3, 2022
[a collaboration of Jenna Logan and L Milton Hankins]
Down long lonesome roads of life, I traveled
only resting when I've grown weak and weary
or stumbling on memory lanes, pea graveled
that cause my mournful eyes to become teary.
My life is a library of memorable adventures.
I look back on those that brought me sorrows,
notwithstanding the rough and rocky ventures,
I’ve always looked forward to brighter morrows.
Courage always serves me as a faith restorer.
Then I'm off on another journey in which I pretend
that I'm a brave adventurist, a vagabond explorer,
hoping to discover serenity around the next bend.
Life offers us many of those up-and-down times,
but I have reached the crest of the highest hills --
sat there, meditated, and wrote poetic rhymes,
about sorrow's depth and how happiness fulfills.
I've learned how to be both malleable and shrewd,
relying on my senses and what nature will provide.
Life can be felicitous, and if I have the right attitude
I will accept my optimism to be a trusted guide.
[a collaboration of Jenna Logan and L Milton Hankins]
Written October 3, 2022
[My thanks to Jenna for
initiating this little venture!]
Ezekiel’s Witness
David J Walker
It was the Spring before Eddie died that Fall
The graveled back road leading to the
end of the airport runway and an audible adventure
In the perfect evening air
no wind
as the light defused
into the equinox sky
we parked his Buick on the leeward side of
the barbed wire fence just beyond the runway
and stood in the chilled and perfectly stilled night air
Where
we became four animated fixtures
beckoning to the coming Continental Airliner
watching it grow nearer
bigger
louder
roaring
rattling our bones in the backwash of
a passenger jet landing on time in
the middle of nowhere
Ezekiel bore witness to the wheel in the wheel
Way up in the middle of the sky
Ezekiel bore witness in the valley of bones
Dry but not lifeless
Eddie left a note naming the boys who would
Bear the pall of his casket
It was the fall of our senior year
rabbits leap across
loneliest graveled dirt roads
barely missing tires
~
possum shuffle past
the white lines along the curbs
hopes fill their belly
~
raccoon dart out from
beneath laurels and pine trees
hustling toward hills
~
bear lumber along
awaiting hibernation
along forest trails
~
deer travel quiet
sighing soft in the headlights
through misty night fog
It was only an old photograph;
But your black heart thought only of you,
You slipped my wallet from my purse,
Shame on you, Shame on you!
Your charges on my card stopped so quickly,
In a matter of minutes I’d phoned, theft found.
The worth was in one sentimental picture,
All I had dumped on graveled ground.
You didn’t win, dear thief, you have my prayers, tho
You took all I had left of him, thought you were clever,
But in my heart lies every detail, his smile, my dress, his suit,
He was gone, and so’s your conscience forever.
Sub Categories
Looking for the formal definition, structure, and history of this poetry form? Visit the Poetry Dictionary entry below. Then return to explore how PoetrySoup members bring the form to life through their own poems.