2025 Poetry Contest Winners

The Church of the Good Shepherd launched our first ever poetry contest to wrap up our creative summer series, Food for Body and Soul! We invited members of our community, as well as the poetry world at large, writers of any or no religious affiliation, to participate.

This year’s theme, “The Rhythm of Life,” evokes thoughts of the natural world as well as the spiritual, and provides rich opportunities to reflect on what it is to be human and to be alive.

All entries were judged by Angier Brock, Emily Pease, and Beth Williams, poets who, as part of the 2025 Food for Body and Soul series, led our poetry collaboration in June.

On this page you’ll find our 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place winners as well as Honorable Mentions and Notable poems.

 3 List of Winning Poems

First Place: One Morning in Spearfish, South Dakota by Marko Capoferri

Marko Capoferri

Marko Capoferri is a poet, musician, occasional journalist, and former conservation worker. He has lived and worked in eight US states, including Montana, where he has lived since 2015. He earned his MFA in poetry from the University of Montana in Missoula. His work has appeared in Porter House Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, Anti-Heroin Chic, Opt West, Sequestrum, The Shore, and elsewhere.



View Mark's Instagram

One Morning in Spearfish, South Dakota

Second Place: Gather by Sara Ryan

Sara Ryan

Sara Ryan is the author of I Thought There Would Be More Wolves (University of Alaska Press) and the chapbooks Never Leave the Foot of an Animal Unskinned (Porkbelly Press) and Excellent Evidence of Human Activity (The Cupboard Pamphlet). Her work has been published in Brevity, Kenyon Review, Diode, and others. She lives in Norfolk, Virginia, where she is an Assistant Professor of English at Virginia Wesleyan University.



View Sara's Website

Gather

a river takes the form of a snake.
or a snake a river. somewhere north,

a cypress grove grows in water,
roots buried deep in sand. it is here

where I wonder about a life. I wonder
about crows and how objects gather

velocity when dropped from a distance,
like stones or eggs or leaves.

I spend my mornings climbing an endless staircase—
it leads nowhere, and I accept it.

I pull myself through the stories
of this imaginary building, leaning on the railings

as I pant and gasp. I wonder many things
from upon its height. the surveyorship

of my temporary summit. this is how it feels
to climb a great tree, I remember. to secure

yourself in its split. the fork in its growth, diverted
from its upward attention by frost or sunscald.

I used to pretend I was flying, that I couldn’t fall—gather
velocity. I gather small rocks from the clear blue lake

at my parents’ home. the fossilized coral of a shallow sea.
in a small box in Virginia, I gather long hollow shells

the color of milk—tusk shells. I hold them at the end
of my mouth, and the air escapes like a whistle.

Third Place: The Chapel Window by Elizabeth Spragins

Elizabeth Spragins

Elizabeth Spencer Spragins has written for more than 100 journals and anthologies in 12 countries. She is the author of three original poetry collections: “Waltzing with Water” and “With No Bridle for the Breeze” (Shanti Arts Publishing) and “The Language of Bones” (Kelsay Books).



View Elizabeth's Website

The Chapel Window

watercolored wings
pulse within the ruby panes—
a stained-glass angel
holds the day fire in her hands
above my unlit candle

Honorable Mention: Apartment Contrition by Caitlin Palo

Caitlin Palo

Caitlin Palo is a poet, martial artist, aunt, language-learner, occasional gardener, frequent library patron, and bread-baker between the equinoxes. Her work has appeared in The Ekphrastic Review, The Inflectionist Review, and Kitchen Table Quarterly. She lives in Seattle and can be found on the web at caitlinpalo.com and cpalo.bsky.social.



View Caitlin's Website

Apartment Contrition

For I have not loved you in fullness,
but have turned my mind to the bones
of other homes, whose porches in my
imagination slide serenely into the forest
where the whippoorwill hides and sings.
For I have laid on the flesh thickly, in
the mind’s eye, with a leather davenport
and shapely clawfoot, the louche and lithe
specter of another life in a small cottage
where I grow roses and tarragon in the
kitchen garden. For I have neglected
the orders of your adoration, let the guts
of the drawers spill out on your counters.
For I have bemoaned your north windows
in whose light only the pothos thrives, and
the shotgun living room where we vie
for the corner seat with a view. For I
have berated your ministrations, the tropical
parties we could throw in winter with your
radiators clanking; and I have despised
your strange wiring – no light in the closet,
nor outlet by the mirror where I shave
my lover’s head. For I have reviled your
plaster-and-lath walls that crumble
beneath nails and hide the irregular studs
of your body. For I have worshipped
the idol of living else-wise, else-where,
in other arms, and I have forgotten how
you let the shadowed filigree of the trees
bless my forehead at the door.

Honorable Mention: All I’ve Ever Wanted by Aisling Cruz

Aisling Cruz

Aisling Cruz is a Midwest-based poet and artist. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Vessels of Light, Foreshadow, and Gotham Literature.



View Aisling's Website

All I’ve Ever Wanted

is to blur the lines of heaven,
catch a cloud and pull it
down to envelope earth.
Trace genealogies, rainbows,
back to the mantle, the holy
unendings stored in songs
unsung, joys carried along
the skies as kites. The winds
still whir their lullabies,
a sacrifice of praise made
so ordinary, so quintessential
in its ringing that every
soft murmur is received
as a bell. This is a mystery
uncovered above, beyond
visions and dreaming of
clouds encroaching. This is
the mystery of arms
extending, zenith found
in the squall, finally living.

Honorable Mention: Radish Ode by Tess Taylor

Tess Taylor

Tess Taylor’s five poetry collections include Rift Zone, one of the Boston Globe’s best books of 2020, and Work & Days, one of the NY Times’s best books of 2016. Her book Last West, about photographer Dorothea Lange, is now a play. Her next book, Come Bite, is out from Milkweed Press in 2027.



View Tess's Website

Radish Ode

Notable: Ode on Sharing by Bill Griffin

Bill Griffin

Bill Griffin is a naturalist and retired family doctor who lives in rural North Carolina. His poetry has appeared widely and he has published seven collections including Snake Den Ridge, a Bestiary, illustrated by Linda French Griffin and set in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Bill features Southern writers at his blog every Friday: poetry, microessays, nature photography.



View Bill's Website

Ode on Sharing

Warm evening for December – Earth has pulled the comforter
up to her chin. Linda returns from the compost heap
and it follows her into the kitchen, fecund stew-scent of living bits. On the scraped plate she shows me
a sliver of mushroom from the pizza we finished
when all at once it sprouts eyestalks and oozes forward:

O Slimetrail Journeyman, O Grossmeout, another second
and I would have popped you into my mouth,
but even more I apologize for mistaking you
for vegetable, O Brothersister, we two who share
the same Kingdom (Animal), O Notafungus
no philosopher may imagine how I appear to you
but dicey alchemists of genes have tallied
our common traits in every cell – sixty snips
of nucleotides, TACG, our shared inheritance

with every creature that calls this humid spheroid
home. You look hungry, exploring a smidge
of olive oil on Meadowbank Limoges, and as Linda
gently drops you back into the pachysandra
I wish for you in parting these blessings:
moisture; a rich pleustron you may scour
with your so diligent radula; and if it should ever snow again,
deep cover. My sleek Cousin, my Daughter, may we share
this little corner of our universe in peace.

Notable: Gold by Thayer Cory

Thayer Cory

In addition to being a poet, Thayer Cory is a Quaker, a parent and grandparent, a retired psychotherapist and an avid hiker. In all these arenas she searches for the threads that keep us connected to human relationships, to the natural world and to the divine. She is the author of “Carried” (Kelsay Books, 2024) and “Cracked Open” (Finishing Line Press, 2018).

Gold

She isn’t able to tell you my name
or how I’m related to her,
but when I enter my sister’s room
where she sits, head wilted
like a dying sunflower,

she looks up, eyes bright,
says, Hey, you gorgeous cutie!
I reply, Hey, you gorgeous cutie!
and we laugh
as the moment fades.

I ask myself over and over,
Is my presence enough?
Can I anticipate nothing,
stop the dreaded movies in my head,
accept a loss that will untether me?

It’s like panning for gold.
You must be empty and alert.
Loose alluvial sand will sift
through your pan. You must wait
and wait until a gold nugget

shines amidst the dross.