Hats off to Kristal Leebrick

Kristal Leebrick's prize-winning love poem has it all: winter, North Dakota, young love, first love, the northern lights, sentimentality, and the wise perspective of later years. It's evocative without being sweet, nostalgic without being mawkish, and it attracted the admiration of the three fine judges of Common Good Books' second annual Love Poems competition, who awarded it first prize.

Leebrick lives in St. Paul, edits a monthly newspaper, and is the author of "Dayton's: A Twin Cities Institution."

The four runners up in the competition are:

Edwin Romond of Wind Gap, Penn.

Kathleen Novak of Minneapolis

Ann Harrington of St. Paul

and Chet Corey of Bloomington.

Here is the winning poem:

New Year Love

I remember our breath

in the ciy air

and how the northern lights gathered

spread up past the water tower

then vanished into the dark.

I remember that January night in North Dakota:

We left the dance,

the hoods of our dads' air force parkas zipped tight,

We ran

into the wind

down the drifting sidewalks of our eight-grade lives

to the brick-and-clapboard row houses on Spruce Street.

We ducked between buildings

A flickering light from someone's TV screen.

A kitchen window.

Your fingers tracing my face.

Your hair brushing my eyes.

Your skin, your lips.

My heart.

I remember that January night in North Dakota,

but I can't remember you rname.

---Kristal Leebrick.