Finalist 2025 River Heron Poetry Prize
The sense of loss when my first son left home took me by surprise – both of us were excited for the next stage of his life. Memories of his childhood seemed brighter and louder in his empty room – louder too my regret at having worked too much his last few years at home. The speaker’s tenderness towards the “you” emerged after many revisions and was like dropping in a final puzzle piece, the picture indiscernible until the end.
Maria Surricchio is originally from the UK and now lives near Boulder, Colorado. A life-long lover of poetry, she began writing in 2020 after an extensive marketing career. A Pushcart Prize nominee, her work has been published in Blackbird, Salamander, Chicago Quarterly Review, SWWIM Every Day, Rust & Moth and elsewhere. She holds a BA in Modern Languages from Cambridge University and an MFA from Pacific University. She has worked globally for major companies in technology and entertainment.
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F: Maria Surricchio
photo by Savvy Click Photography
Judge Jed Myers’ commentary:
So deftly crafted line by short line, this brave pensive poem lets us in where “regret halves / and halves you again” in the looking back we do when a child leaves home ready and lacking and lost with all we could bestow. The atmosphere of this missingness is in “light enough for dark // shapes to stay true….” We hear “the owl’s call in the purple air” and go on into what we don’t know, “open fields stretching ahead….” There’s a subtle encouragement here—a hint that grief and hope can be friends.