V E R S E and I M A G E

is not the moon over me.

I have had my supper,

and now I watch a swift scissor the air,

wings shaped like lunar crescents,

one rising, one setting

as it flips on its axis

in pursuit of its evening

meal, dusk-colored plumage

bleeding into a southern summer night.

Half a world away, my son

distributes food in a land

that is hard to love,

among people who do not love him,

a land where locusts no longer

swarm in a biblical effusion of life,

but flies amass through a prodigy

of death, and survivors teem

over palettes of aid boxes

driven to the edge of insect-

frenzy, children gleaning

lentils spilled into the dirt

like lots cast to see

who lives and who dies.

Soldiers of another stripe

fire machine guns

into the pre-dawn sky,

echoing across the landscape

like a call to prayer. A reminder

of the governance of the absolute.

Buildings bleed

into rubble. Rubble bleeds

into dust. Dust into hunger.

Hunger into gall clinging

to the back of the throat,

the body’s taste of sorrow.

And, above it all, the moon hangs

like one severed wing of a swift.

My son (I imagine him facing homeward)

would see it set into the barren hillocks

that lie humped beyond his camp

like so many sheet-covered bodies,

while I face east to watch it rise

over a grassy meadow alive

with the scratch of katydids,

the tilted crescent bleeding

its pale light over all the earth

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Gregory Lobas’ book, Left of Center, won the 2022 Dogfish Head Poetry Prize. A 2026 Best of the Net nominee, his work can be found in New Ohio Review, Tar River Poetry, Cimarron Review, Vox Populi, Susurrus, and many other journals.

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tents hawking fireworks

these missiles, at least, only sound

and weeping stars

Bloodroot Haiku Award; Honorable Mention

✾  ✾

Hannah Ringler is a poet, gardener, freelance editor, and preschool mom living in Durham, North Carolina. She composes poetry at red lights and standing at the kitchen sink. By night, she is the State Coordinator for the Poetry in Plain Sight Program of the North Carolina Poetry Society.

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Our wedding rings two spirals in opposite directions.

Each defining the other, each apart together.

I first followed you through the back field, your hair golden

as broom straw in sunlight beneath a cloudless southside sky.

Even then I knew it was you I had to live with. Love at first sight

I had always thought a stupid myth I now had come to believe in.

On our first Thanksgiving, you crossed the Appalachians with your sister

to my apartment where we were first alone together.

The scent of heliotrope left on the pillow and sandalwood

on the braided leather bracelets we exchanged.

I followed the roadmap of your body from the green undulating waves

of the Outer Banks to the narrow cobblestone back streets of Rome.

Each child’s birth a seeded light of our ancestors, growing through us like

winter ivy or an ocean wave rising towards some inevitable shore.

I massaged your back in the dim-lit hospital room as you birthed our son

and steadied you as our daughter slipped into this world.

A slow learner, now after 50 years, I’ve finally realized that love is a seed of

mitochondrial light, something I carry from those who’ve come

before. It shines through this oculus of our lives, a commitment

that opens time’s spiral until a death parts us. This is the heart of solstice

beyond the known into the unknown. The time after as before

when we may find each other again in an afterlife not of our making.

Carol Bessent Hayman Poetry of Love; First Place

✾  ✾

Chapman Hood Frazier’s The Lost Books of the Bestiary was published in 2023. His work has appeared in The Virginia Quarterly Review, The Southern Poetry Review, The South Carolina Review and other publications. Currently a Professor Emeritus from James Madison University, he lives in Rice, Virginia.

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Beneath the trees the children play

surrounded by the swirl of leaves.

They waste another careless day

spending time doing as they please,

unafraid what things may fall away.

Please do not scold, please nothing say

of the loss that we feel today.

Such knowledge will fill no need

for those beneath the trees.

Leave them to it! Let them play!

Give them peace at least another day.

They do not need to know that though their days

go slow, they go. Don’t make them see

that days will come when they will be

still beneath the trees.

Charles Edward Eaton Award, Sonnet or Traditional Form; Honorable Mention

✾  ✾

Poet Laureate of Hickory, North Carolina, Scott Owens is author of twenty-four poetry collections, recipient of awards from the Academy of American Poets and the Pushcart Prize Anthology, among others. He is Professor of Poetry at Lenoir Rhyne University, owns and operates Taste Full Beans Coffeehouse, and coordinates Poetry Hickory.

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In 11th grade

I am told

by Austin Roberts,

that according to physics,

there is no concept

of cold,

simply an

absence

of heat.

1,500 miles,

two decades,

and several

heartsmashings later,

my hand finds its way

under the covers to the small

of my husband’s bare back.

he says

scootching away.

Not cold,

I think, as an echo

of a half-remembered

thought.

My hands

just lack

the heat of you.

In Defense of Science Award; Second Place

✾  ✾

Lora Hawkins is an assistant professor at Appalachian State. Most recently, her work has appeared in English Journal, Anthology of Kansas City Writers, In the Black and in the Red, Pinesong, Poets for Peace, and The Nature of Our Times. She holds credentials from Columbia, Brown, and Warren Wilson College.

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All selections are from PINESONG 2026, Volume 62, the annual anthology of the North Carolina Poetry Society. © 2026 NCPS.

The North Carolina Poetry Society is an inclusive, expansive community of writers, readers, teachers, and friends that spans the state’s 100 counties and extends throughout the United States. Its mission is to support, promote, and celebrate poetry. Thank you to the entire Board of NCPS – it takes all of you to bring these contests, gatherings, and publications into being. Special thanks to Sherry Thrasher, Pinesong Editor and Adult Contest Coordinator; Kim Lane, Student Contest Coordinator; Kevin Watson and Press 53, interior layout and cover design for Pinesong as well as sponsor of the Poet Laureate Contest; Kashiana Singh, NCPS President and behind-the-scenes magic elf who makes sure warp and weft are woven into beauty; Chad Knuth, program planner; and all the proof readers, copy editors, book schleppers, goody providers (I’m looking at you, Joan) and enthusiastic supporters of Awards Day each May.

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The North Carolina Poetry Society conducts twelve contest for adults each year. The submission period opens on December 1, with a deadline of February 1. Winners are invited to attend and read their poem at Sam Ragan Awards Day at Weymouth Center for the Arts and Humanities (Southern Pines) each May. Check HERE for contest guidelines and details.

Winning poems are published in the anthology Pinesong. If you would like to purchase a copy ($10), or if you are a NCPS member and would like to request your complimentary copy, please contact Membership Vice President Joan Barasovska:  msjoan9@gmail.com.

Sponsored by Press 53; Final Judge: NC Poet Laureate Jaki Shelton Green. Open to poets currently residing in North Carolina.

Sponsored by Alice Osborn; Poems in any form, any style, written by adults for children 2 to 12 years of age.

Endowed by David Manning; Any form, any style, on the theme of love.

Sponsored by Kashiana Singh; Light verse in any form, any style, including limericks

Endowed by Pepper Worthington; Any form, any style, on the theme of American heritage, sibling-hood, or nature.

Endowed by Ann Campanella; Any form, any style, on the theme of courage or crisis

Sponsored by Doug Stuber; Any form, any style, addressing contemporary events or issues

Endowed by Priscilla Webster-Williams; Any form, any style, on the theme of disability, disease, and healing.

Sponsored by Bill Griffin; Contemporary English language haiku (untitled).

Endowed by an anonymous friend of Charles Edward Eaton; Sonnet or other traditional form, maximum of 50 lines.

Endowed by Nexus Poets and Linda Golden; Any form, any style.

Sponsored by Garrett Sharpe; Any form or style that engages with scientific ideas across all disciplines—climatology, oceanography, microbiology, chemistry, physics, astronomy, biology, and beyond.

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