Heaven's Point, Four O'Clock

Winner of the English Language and Literature Division Creative Writing Contest - Poetry

The mountain range resembles

a particularly dimpled red potato, or

purple sand dunes that could be changed by

the mere blowing of the wind, or by the hand of

God reaching down and tapping the

rockface, making it wiggle like Jell-O. The

view is so delicious I find myself wanting to

take a bite—I’m sure the jagged crest to my

left would have a delightful crunch. The mountains are

the crushed velvet of a dress, the foam blocks of

a trampoline park, soft and supple Play-Doh waiting to be

molded and shaped.

I wrote this poem while on vacation in the Blue Ridge Mountains, and the house my family and I stayed in is called Heaven’s Point. I was sitting at the kitchen table (alone, because the rest of my family were taking naps), and I remembered I had to submit something for this contest, so I wrote about the view in front of me. I chose free verse for two reasons. One, rhyme and meter do not come easily to me, and I was supposed to relax on this vacation. Two, my stream of thoughts about the mountains was random, with very little structure, so I thought free verse would work best. I chose to use lots of enjambment to reflect the spontaneity of my thoughts, and to show how, when you look at nature, thoughts just kind of tumble from your head into your hands with no rhyme—no pun intended—or reason.