from River Heron Poetry Prize final judge, Alina Stefanescu:

"This tribute, and its alternating forms of address, shifts between description, incantation, succor, and imperatives. There is a magic in the use of diction and syntax--"Sing it full-throttled and thundering"--where love for life mingles with the noise of the world and silence of trees. I love the circularity or continuity or sense of clutching at life enacted in this poem. It is beautiful and sonorous and immediate."

Watched by crows and friend to salamanders, Lisa Creech Bledsoe is a hiker, beekeeper, and writer living in the mountains of Western North Carolina. She is the author of two full-length books of poetry, Appalachian Ground (2019), and Wolf Laundry (2020). She has new poems out or forthcoming in American Writers Review, The Main Street Rag, The Public Poetry 2020 Anthology, Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, and Star*Line, among others.