[Spindleshanks]

Originally Posted by Maryann Corbett

Chicken

As in the movies when the traffic swerves
and skids to miss the hero in its way,
he ran among the cars as if to play
a game of chicken with his mothers nerves;
She wept to see him standing there across
the other side, her perfect, smiling boy,
all rosy-cheeked with death defying joy,
an icon of her momentary loss.
It wasn`t quite a miracle: not quite,
but close. Not Lazarus, or snake and rod,
or water into wine. But who`s to say?
She held him up just like an acolyte
would make an offering and thanking God
fell down upon her knees as if to pray.

If the competition was restricted to sonnets, the judges may question the lack of a clear volta with this, but as that's not the case, that's no issue. It certainly passes muster as a poem. It's well-constructed, metrically sound though lacking in surprises, simply told, easily accessible, but there are a few small issues with punctuation and syntactical logic. Parsing the opening sentence, the simile has the traffic as the subject, wheras the boy becomes the subject in the parallel. Nitty, perhaps, but it gave me pause. The other logic issue lies with the close: "thanking God, fell down upon her knees as if to pray." If she is thanking God, she is praying, surely.
As to punctuation, I would suggest a period to conclude L4, hyphen for death defying, "thanking God" bookended with commas.
Favourite line: all rosy-cheeked with death defying joy."
Nice. All the best with it.

Peter