Driving toward the moon,
I watch it absorb the dimly lit blue sky
into its pores. It slowly shrinks
as if driving away, but we are
driving toward it. It appears close,
like a moving picture on the windshield,
but I can't touch it no matter
how far we drive. I think about my father,
how sometimes he feels near, but he is
so far away. The invisible sky
slips through the slit in my window,
making my hair surge
frantically like a flag left in a storm.
Jennifer Kurth
"Thinking of My Dad in Heaven" won First Place in the Junior Division
of the 2009 Kent County Poetry Contest.