As my son would say, “Schwow!” My first poetry competition win!

Dear Patti,

It is a true pleasure to inform you that you are one of the honorees in the Sixth Annual International Ultra-Short Competition sponsored by The Binnacle at The University of Maine at Machias. This does not mean that you have won any of the cash prizes, but that we would like to include your work, “Katydid,” in our 2009 Ultra-Short edition.

We had over 900 submissions from twenty-one countries and six continents, most of which were worthy of inclusion in a volume such as this. From this wonderful gathering of works we chose fifty-seven pieces, including yours, that we felt had the greatest merit. From these fifty-seven works, four were selected as cash prize winners: grand prize winner, a first-place work of prose, a first-place work of poetry, and a UMM student prize. To view the list of finalists and winners, please visit our web site at http://www.umm.maine.edu/binnacle or http://www.umm.maine.edu/faculty/necastro/binnacle and follow the Update or Ultra-Short links. They will be posted there on Friday of this week….

Obviously, I can’t wait for Friday, lol. In fact, I’d wager that my reading this before I went to bed last night led to my insomnia (I’ve been up since 3:30!). I’m starting to get sleepy again, but the Robins are making such a racket outside that I doubt I could sleep anyway. Might as well try, though.