The Second Place winner of Anglican Beach Party's 2009 Anglican Poetry Contest is Virginia Crosswhite Hyde. Two of her poems appear below. UNWED MADONNA Behold the girl madonna-yet-to-be, Not Raphaelite, no halo on her hair, No willing curve of arms that wait to bear The unknown child who comes relentlessly. No, rather, she is angry with the life She shares with the fierce alien within, The maggot in her flesh that would have been Her own loved image--if she were a wife. How pensively she stands, how pale and young: She does not rave, she does not even cry. Her brain thuds heavily, "To die! To die!" Yet even her child will not arrive unsung. Some hour her love will throb like blood to greet The unknown atom pulsing in the womb And, as her flesh cocoons him from dark doom, Her heartbeat will be music, sad and sweet. And this will be her child's first lullaby,