Skulls and other crumbling caves invite
Smaller things to enter them. So this mill,
Detail jumbling as its carpentry unlaced,
Called me down to its hollow, where irrigation
Swilled in a greener-than-grass surface algae,
Emerald, tepid, moating around the swayback
Structure tossed up by waves of receded grain.
Blue damselflies, thin as flower petals,
Coupled in a fringe around the pool.
Beyond that water the pestle sun had ground
All grass to a fine powder. The mill itself
Was graying, ripples of fallen wood dropped
Like flesh sloughing to reveal the few bones.
It had a roomless feel to it, filled with its own
Decline, but inside, northwestern light divided
From the dark. Wood thinned until it became
Part of the air. The floor softened and rotted
From pigeon droppings. Here, there, rusted, stiffened
Machinery. A mill, a honeycomb of angled
Chutes, evaporating wood and light, dry
Rooms. In one chamber, a box, hinged
And built into the wall, nested the remains
Of pigeons straightening wings into bone,
Their eyes looking into dust. No miller
Nor sign of any, no tools gleaming with body
Oils, no salt-bleached bandannas, no preserved jars –
Only from the rafters hung the long and sunken
Paper-dead flesh of a drying snake,
Teeth curved back like fingers to its open
Throat, its eyes, the thin shininess of wheat chaff.
Standing in the matterless door,
I saw the fluvial swell of some wild summer
Weed bent with waterless ripeness, yolk
And blush, like a peach, but rolling, fleshless gold.
March 15, 2010. This winter paved the desert over, storm after storm laying down two-to-three feet of whitetop, setting spring back by more than half a month. Since December 21st, I’ve been out only rarely, the deep snow creating hazards well beyond my abilities to negotiate them. Who knew that when I moved to southeastern Utah I’d find myself wanting a pair of snowshoes? Last year I hiked all the way through winter, staying home only when snowfall piled up over eight inches, which it hardly ever did.
I tried going out yesterday. An overnight cloud cover had insulated the ground against a freeze. The result: dense but soft snow, still ranging in many place from 10-20 inches deep, and on bare ground mud so fluid that, holding still, you moved, gliding on a sloppy escalator whichever direction happened to be “down.” Every step on snow resulted in a 10-20 inch drop straight to the ground, a vertical fall I’ve learned to move with on a limited basis. The body learns from falling, but when it happens every footstep, you expend a great deal of energy moving the least distance forward. Meanwhile each footfall on mud resulted in movement barely under control in an only slightly less vertical plane. Downhill in spots I surfed muddy rolls and creases, riding the soles of my shoes like mini-shortboards. (more) »
A compass needle, a lizard, spins half a turn
To keep me in sight, tweaking my sense of direction:
Spring is coming — that way.
According to my 2010 turtle calendar, the Vernal Equinox arrives Saturday, March 20. To celebrate spring’s arrival last year, WIZ ran a Spring Poetry Run-off that turned out to be lots of fun. So beginning March 19, we’re running WIZ’s Second Annual Spring Poetry Run-off, this time as a poetry contest!
In keeping with WIZ’s mission to help develop, inspire, and promote literary nature and science writing in the Mormon writing community, we encourage poets to help call an end to winter and midwife the birth of a milder season, a season of gardens, returning flocks, and light that takes the tarnish off the blood.
Contest rules
Submit poems to wilderness@motleyvision.org between March 7 and March 31.
All poems submitted must be original, published or unpublished work. If the work has been previously published, please provide publication information and be sure you can grant us rights to re-publish the work.
Please submit poems 50 lines long or less.
All poems submitted must be spring-themed or at least mention spring.
Poets may submit up to 3 poems.
The contest will run from March 19 through March 31 or longer, if enough poems come in to warrant extending the contest. All submissions will be published on the blog, where they’ll become automatically eligible for competition as well as open to readers’ informal feedback in the post’s comments. Authors retain all rights to their work.
Entries will be posted one per day until all entries have been posted. Following the contest’s closing, readers will vote on WIZ to choose the winning poem.
A winner will be announced within a week after the last poem has been posted and all votes have been cast. The winner will be awarded his or her choice of either a copy of Lance Larsen’s Backyard Alchemy (University of Tampa Press 2009) or Warren Hatch’s Mapping the Bones of the World (Signature Books 2007).
If you don’t want to compete but would like to participate in the Spring Poetry Runoff, let me know and I’ll mark the poem, “Not for competition.”
So, if you have written a poem which mentions spring or one in which spring figures prominently and that fits WIZ’s themes and content, e-mail it to us at wilderness@motleyvision.org. Please review our submissions guide before submitting.
I almost forgot! Today, WIZ turns one. Happy Birthday to us! I’ve been preoccupied and haven’t come up with any fun thing to do in celebration, but I would like to run out a line of thanks yous.
Thanks–deep, ever-flowing thanks–to Wm Morris, for helping me open this space and for providing solid support.
Thanks, WIZ readers, for taking time out of your no doubt very busy schedules to while away moments here. Writing without audience is, if not dead, not as alive as it might be.
Thanks to contributors who have submitted work and helped establish literary bio-diversity for the site. You have no idea how good it has been to meet you (in an Internet way) and work with you.
Thanks to my family for enduring my distraction with this project, and especially thanks to my son Saul for his tech support and other vital forms of participation.
My hope is that, over the next year, I’ll be able to take WIZ to another level, one that will make more worthwhile everyone’s interest, faith, and participation. The literary nature and science writing field is burgeoning, including among LDS. I fully intend to find a way to gather its flowers while I may.
How vainly men themselves amaze
To win the Palm, the Oke, or Bayes ;
And their uncessant Labors see
Crown’d from some single Herb or Tree,
Whose short and narrow-vergèd Shade
Does prudently their Toyles upbraid ;
While all the Flow’rs and Trees do close
To weave the Garlands of repose. (more) »
She could smell the season on him. Summers
he came through the door redolent of horses
and wild mint; winters, copper and ice.
Metallic and snow-clean, he cooled the house. (more) »
The poplar’s shadow on her hand
Indicates a tree in spring.
Willets, catbirds, and broncos all hear
Big-hipped nature dancing across the Rockies
Stripping and putting on the many faces of
A weather-beaten land:
Green, red, brown, and white,
The flag of summer on the horizon.
They are indivisible incompatibles,
This landscape and
The mutterings of a middle woman.
Her words lie naked in a field,
Lost in the grazing cows,
Being licked up and slobbered on
By their wide, warm tongues,
Always emphasizing individuality
And difference and commonality and similarity,
Exploring, teaching, imposing,
Crying, “Look at me!
Learn from me!
Listen!”
The weather-beaten woman
Tanned, freckled, and dry,
Green, red, brown, and white—
With wrinkles round her many-faced smile—
Observes her fleeting springtime
And is always living tenderly.
Laura is a mommy and sometimes writer who dabbles in gardening and the expressive arts. She says of this poem, “Back when I was in college I wrote a poem about spring in Utah as an homage to May Swenson. It’s a mash-up of titles of her work and bits of her prose and I thought it might be a good fit for Love of Nature month at WIZ.” You can read more of her stuff at A Motley Vision or Depressed (But Not Unhappy) Mormon Mommy. She is very excited for spring.
Adam writes of this video Valentine that he made it for his “wife and (if the latest ultrasound is correct) five daughters … I think it fits your theme this month, and the connection to nature should be obvious.” ________________________________________________________________________________
Adam K. K. Figueira was born to the east of where he lives now, but then went west, and back towards the middle again. He doesn’t see himself as a figure of any importance, but he likes to watch, make, and write about films, particularly LDS films. His greatest achievements are all girls, and that doesn’t appear to be changing in the foreseeable future. Adam’s work is available to read and/or watch at his blog, Anew; Toward an LDS Cinema, the other blog he writes for; his YouTube channel; and his professional site, adamkk.com.