Third Place Winner: Heidi Greco Homily This morning I received a letter from you something to pause and hold in my hand, a gift it seemed, from somebody else's past. Opening the envelope, I pulled out the sheets of paper, unfolded their careful creases, remembering how you were the one who first unfolded the lines of my body, opened me to myself. Among news about your mother, complaints about your son, a joke your four-year-old granddaughter told, you ask me about nasturtiums, inquire if the climate is mild enough in the town where you still live, whether they'll grow and flourish there, that place I try to forget, the town I moved away from most of a lifetime ago. Yes, they can be grown there, I begin to compose my reply, explaining that nasturtiums were my first success in the garden. I remember myself as a child, pushing a handful of wrinkled seeds into the warm black soil I'd shoved into an old clay pot. How the sun felt, that morning in June, as I stood with its heat on my back, hands on my hips, half-expecting green shoots Jack-and-the-Beanstalk style. Then, even when I'd forgotten them, how they'd thrived without my help, surprising me when I'd stumbled on them, weeks later behind the shed. Discovered their clutter of leaves, interspersed with orange and red, blooms so bright they might have been singing, loud in the August heat, their surly tipS tumbling over the lip of their cracking clay container, even their roots a jumbled knot a thicket emerging beneath. I learned, I think, a lesson or two from those sprawling summer nasturtiums, their resilience an inspiration to be examined. The fact that they will survive restraint or the tang of utter neglect, find a way to nourish themselves then explode in the purest of hues: a gallery of sunny flowers exultant, beside the road. And for a moment I press my lips against the pages of your letter. Taste the bite of time gone by, only slightly bitter and think of an orangey bouquet, its petals drooping in a vase, forgotten and maybe left behind too long ago. Back to October/04 Winners Home