Every so often they came. Like clockwork.
                  Prostrated on the ground, deferential and proper
                  Styles changed, fashions passed and so 
                  "We humbly beg that the Empress Livia sit 
                  For another portrait." 


                  Like clockwork you turned
                  Twenty
                  Thirty
                  Forty. More. Styles changed. Time passed.
                  And so they came. Like clockwork. 

                  Were you ever weary of it? The 
                  Parading 
                  Bowing 
                  Scraping 
                  The eternal fanfare - most of all 
                  The portraits, 
                  The sculptures, 
                  The sham of eternal youth. 

                  You may as well not have been there, Livia - 
                  For all the attention they ever paid you. Their eyes
                  Always averted, as much out of respect as of 
                  The need to keep careful watch, lest the knife chip
                  A wrinkle of truth 
                  Upon the flawless marble skin. 

                  Like clockwork time passed. Your sculptures revered
                  Across lands and seas, all winsome beauties. The marble
                  flushed with youth, never learning your follies 
                  Never growing, never changing, never fading. 
                  Faithful renditions of you. 

                  You'll admit it. 
                  Jealous of a lump of rock. 

                  Sixty. Seventy. Eighty. You kept living.
                  They kept coming. Another year, 
                  Another brand new coiffure
                  But your face remained the same. 

                  No spark in those dewy eyes,
                  Nor warmth in disseminated smiles, Livia - 
                  What did you think of your pallid busts 
                  When you finally died? Did you smile hoarsely at 
                  Their feeble attempts to hide the truth from the world
                  Or did you resent  them even then
                  Dorian Gray to the last?

I would like to establish something new that I have not done before, because I think it will be encouraging to many to know who the finalists were in the contest which drew several hundred submissions. Although there is no financial gain for being a finalist, it will let the entrant know how their work was viewed and their position in the final selection, and believe me, it was no easy task.

The poets who were in the final cut and judged by 3 judges, are as follows:

Coyote's Way (Scatting On The Dao) by Helen Ruggieri

The Aerialist by Suzanne Cole

Rain Walking by Mary Peirce Bale

To Dream in Hebrew by Leslie Cohen

Outlanders by Jennifer VanBuren

The Way The Ground Opens (For Kellie Jones, Born May 16th 1959) by J. Otis Powell

The Pulse Of The Ages by Daryl Lindsey

To A Woman I Never Met by Carole Bugge

Honey Hollow by Carole Bugge

Dahlia in the Window by Caroline Misner

Seldom are the Days by Robert Blumenstein

Still Life With Teapots by Patricia A. Boutilier

Go Inside A Shell by Ruth Fogelman