Mormon Artist Magazine has published a fun interview they did with me for their current issue. I’ve not often been interviewed–just one phone interview where I wound up misquoted–so I appreciate Mormon Artist’s interest in my work and attention to detail during this process.
The pics accompanying are unfortunately not as fine as I’d like, but [...]
Thanks to great participation, WIZ’s Spring Poetry Runoff Celebration ran halfway through spring. Now it’s time for followers of and participants in the contest to make their preferences known. Here at WIZ, we all get to be poetry judges for five days–part of the informal nature of this contest. But rather than restrict each judge [...]
In one of my favorite haunts, Crossfire Canyon, the creek is flooding as at the lake upstream water jets from the dam’s spillway for the first time ever. The spring runoff is not even halfway through as a record snowpack melts from the Abajo Mountains upstream and runs down into the desert.
But here at WIZ, [...]
A solitary hawk beneath
a sky of lavender and gold,
assumed the vantage of a tree
and there reconnaissanced the cold.
Once-melting drifts of speckled snow
grew stiff against the freezing ground.
The humid gusts abandoned hope
and left the air without a sound.
What once was flowing now was tamed;
the rivulets, muddy and curled
lost strength and stream, as puddles became
glass windows to [...]
I
The Rancher Speaks
I was in the sheep business for years.
Sold off my sheep and got into the cattle business and now I have friends.
The cattle men talk to me.
I suppose what finally drove me out was the predators.
The eagles swooping down and taking newborn lambs
and there was nothing we could do about it.
We tried noisemakers [...]
Today the secret names of everything
come back, the ancient names.
Tribe-of-the-morning names
call to me from the wind, which I know
as shut-your-eyes-breath,
hands-over-your-ears, gone-with-the-ice-song,
hymn-rising-out-of-cottonwood-sap.
Smell-of-dogwood; it is called,
smell-of-willow.
Daffodil has become again
small-pusher-of-earth-and-snow,
light-out-of-stone,
seawater-turned-sunshine.
This morning has its own name,
separate from all other mornings,
fire-in-the-clouds
waking-in-the-folds-of-mountain,
joy-of-long-shadows.
And now spring has brought
mist-in-my-breath,
shining-on-the-rocks,
quick-and-noisy-in-the-canyon,
to make soft soil in the garden
where I kneel for the first time
on the almost-warm-gift-to-growing
and work [...]
At five in the morn I gaze upon the Earth
Holding my little one so innocent and mild.
Hoping that I might have a chance
To feel her trails of glory
The midnight rain ended soon,
Leaving clean the outside world
I glanced through a crack to catch a glimpse
Of Nature’s hallowed view.
Crisp, Clean, Calm the scene lay before my eyes.
Each [...]
More than any winter I had known, that winter.
In evening I pruned against winter’s loss.
The sky echoed from the first spring’s rain.
At my touch, the tree quivered, beading.
The tree arched like two hands cupped,
reaching up, fingers outstretched.
Sarah stood in the light of the door,
leaning against a white pillar,
calling me home from the dark;
as each branch [...]
I never saw so many frogs;
You didn’t either. We walked
the tracks, sometimes stepping
from tie to tie, sometimes
walking the rail–holding
our hands out as if
for balance. It was all show.
Our balance was never
in question. Besides the danger
ran in the other direction,
along the bridge. We
could look down, almost dizzy,
and see the river. But even there,
we didn’t need our [...]
Dusted red stone
wrapped in gray deluge
yields greened cliffs shimmering
like an unearthly vision
in sunshine’s morning haze.
Silver gray brush bears yellow blossom cascades.
Stands of ocotillo—no longer barren,
barricaded with thorns—
blush tiny green leaves until
burnt orange petals burst from their fingertips.
Drying mesquite scents air
alive with the rush of rabbits, cooing doves,
the hawk’s hunting cry, coyotes’ eerie babble,
silent lizards thawing [...]