[photo by Andre Tew — thanks!]
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[ a sampling of winning poems by Gregory Lobas, Hannah Ringler, Chapman Hood Frazier, Scott Owens, Lora E. Hawkins – May 16, 2026 at Weymouth Center ]
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Moon Over Gaza
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is not the moon over me.
I have had my supper,
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
Poet Laureate Award
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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
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Hannah Ringler
Bloodroot Haiku Award; Honorable Mention
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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 50th Solstice
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Our wedding rings two spirals in opposite directions.
Each defining the other, each apart together.
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I first followed you through the back field, your hair golden
as broom straw in sunlight beneath a cloudless southside sky.
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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.
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On our first Thanksgiving, you crossed the Appalachians with your sister
to my apartment where we were first alone together.
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The scent of heliotrope left on the pillow and sandalwood
on the braided leather bracelets we exchanged.
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I followed the roadmap of your body from the green undulating waves
of the Outer Banks to the narrow cobblestone back streets of Rome.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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
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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.
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Chapman Hood Frazier
Carol Bessent Hayman Poetry of Love; First Place
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✾ ✾
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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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Churchyard Playground, Cokesbury SC
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Scott Owens
Charles Edward Eaton Award, Sonnet or Traditional Form; Honorable Mention
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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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The Second Law of Thermodynamics
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In 11th grade
I am told
by Austin Roberts,
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that according to physics,
there is no concept
of cold,
simply an
absence
of heat.
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1,500 miles,
two decades,
and several
heartsmashings later,
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my hand finds its way
under the covers to the small
of my husband’s bare back.
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Oh, it’s cold
he says
scootching away.
Not cold,
I think, as an echo
of a half-remembered
thought.
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My hands
just lack
the heat of you.
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Lora E. Hawkins
In Defense of Science Award; Second Place
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✾ ✾
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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.
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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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[photo by Andre Tew]
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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.
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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.
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The NCPS Adult Contests are:
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Poet Laureate Award
Sponsored by Press 53; Final Judge: NC Poet Laureate Jaki Shelton Green. Open to poets currently residing in North Carolina.
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Alice Osborn Award
Sponsored by Alice Osborn; Poems in any form, any style, written by adults for children 2 to 12 years of age.
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Carol Bessent Hayman Poetry of Love Award
Endowed by David Manning; Any form, any style, on the theme of love.
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Katherine Kennedy McIntyre Light Verse Award
Sponsored by Kashiana Singh; Light verse in any form, any style, including limericks
Mary Ruffin Poole American Heritage Award
Endowed by Pepper Worthington; Any form, any style, on the theme of American heritage, sibling-hood, or nature.
Poetry of Courage Award
Endowed by Ann Campanella; Any form, any style, on the theme of courage or crisis
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Bruce Lader Poetry of Witness Award
Sponsored by Doug Stuber; Any form, any style, addressing contemporary events or issues
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Jean Williams Poetry of Disability, Disease, and Healing Award
Endowed by Priscilla Webster-Williams; Any form, any style, on the theme of disability, disease, and healing.
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Bloodroot Haiku Award
Sponsored by Bill Griffin; Contemporary English language haiku (untitled).
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Charles Edward Eaton Award
Endowed by an anonymous friend of Charles Edward Eaton; Sonnet or other traditional form, maximum of 50 lines.
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Robert Golden Award
Endowed by Nexus Poets and Linda Golden; Any form, any style.
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In Defense of Science Poetry Award
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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– Bill
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Thanks Jane, come on down. The naturalist and the poet use the selfsame tool -- paying attention. ---B