Shannel Garrow Wins Honorable Mention for Poem

Recently Jefferson Community College announced the winners of the 2013 North Country Writers Contest. Among the winners, winning Honorable mention in the Poetry genre was Shannel Garrow of Hogansburg for her poem “Sage.”

The Writers Contest included the genres Short Fiction, Poetry and Essay/Non-Fiction. Submissions were required to reflect a connection to the North Country and be a previously unpublished work.

The award for honorable mention was $25 and Garrow’s work was published online on the JCC website. Award recipients were also requested to give a reading of their winning pieces at the North Country Writers Festival Reading at JCC on Thursday, October 24, 2013. Below we share Shannel Garrow’s winning poem. Congratulations!

“Sage” - Shannel Garrow

There’s a 1 in 3000 chance that you will die

by lightning strike within your lifetime.

Those numbers are too high for me to stand

on our porch during a thunderstorm without

fearing for your life.  I wonder how many storms

we have seen altogether, collectively and separate.

I ask you this and you tell me not to worry.

I tell you wearing rubber boots doesn’t make

it less likely to be struck.  You light a stick of sage

and I can smell the butane in the lighter

before anything else.  They say that if the smoke

of burning sage smells foul to you there is an evil

spirit in your body.  I wonder who “they” are.  It must

be an old Indian saying, passed on from mouth

to ear and then translated in and out of its

original language and my interpretation

is all that is left.  The smoke rises and sage

smells like sage to both of us.  It’s a relief.

I have come to fear the moment

between lighting the stick and inhaling

the smoke.