In fevered dreams, a vision of the winning limericist

Ihad a terrible nightmare the other night. I dreamed I was writing a column about the winning entry in the Magnificently Magnificent Large Valley 101 Hot Weather Limerick contest and as I read it, in my fevered dream, it was awful and made absolutely no sense

Fortunately, as I said, that was just a dream. In the cold, clear light of day I can confidently report the results of the voting and tell you the winner is … pause for effect … Entry E by Carol Whitehurst of Tempe:

Too hot to talk about lust/Getting close is just not a must./We wish to be clingy/But the sweat is too stingy,/And with friction we may self-combust.

That little ditty took in 43.72 percent of your online votes, a clear winner.

And to the winner go the spoils — four tickets to an upcoming Diamondbacks game.

The runners-up were readers and limericists: A — Sara Winter; B — Wendy Clay; C —Susan S. Trail, and D — J-P A. Malonado.

So, that’s that for this year. I have to say you people do seem to be getting better at this. Narrowing it down to, say, 30, out of several hundred entries wasn’t all that hard, but narrowing it down to the five finalists was actually hard work.

God willing, you can give it a try again next summer, unless, of course, I come to my senses in the meantime and decide not to subject myself to another round of this nonsense.

I probably will. A lot of you people included with your entries a note saying you had fun doing it and I am glad of that.