Dore Kiesselbach

Dore Kiesselbach has won the Bridport Prize, which carries an award of 5,000 pounds. The award was presented last week in England. Here is Kiesselbach's prize-winning poem:

NON-INVASIVE

Deciding where to put you, my wife and I speak

of size we won't live to see.

It's the overhead wires we're concerned about.

We create space by killing what was there

with poison painted on ten breathing stumps,

amend a transition zone with peat

when the hole I dig reaches clay.

That they'll be ready to connect,

she roughs your roots up, the way

doubt cultivates us, while I hold you

by the slow persistence of your trunk.

In the corner of one eye I glimpse

a stranger sitting out in spring

when you're full grown

and do not envy him but wonder

what he thinks of what he sees.

Did we achieve our woodland paradise?

Putting you in is like stocking

a stream making a comeback

these years. Bending low to form

a raised soil circle for water

I'll pour each day around you for weeks,

my hands assume that basic shape

related to but more perfect than applause.