A Mormon literary backcountry where words and place come together.

 

 

 

 

Archive for the 'Nature literature' Category

WIZ Kids: Floral Spring by Jenna

Monday, July 26th, 2010

April’s beauty carries with it rain
Wet tear drops falling from the sky
Its premier today, showing up shy
Sliding into slits in buds
Mixing itself with different muds
Slipping down my forehead
Touching my eyelashes ahead
I close my eyes to nature’s gift
While they were closed I did drift
To the month of May’s sweet, sweet scent
To view flowers and green is [...]

Mormon Artist Magazine interviews … me

Thursday, July 22nd, 2010

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 [...]

WIZ Kids: Why the Wind Blows Things Down by Virginia R.

Tuesday, July 20th, 2010

Narrator: It was a sunny day in the town Pudding but no one could see it. There was a cloud in the way of the sun.
Boy: I can’t see anything!
The mayor: We must do something!
All: But what?
Town folks: Ask the king!
Mayor: Not the king!
Boy: That is a good idea.
Mayor: The king does not rule the [...]

Oreo v. the Expedition

Monday, May 24th, 2010

Last week my husband found himself in need of a computer monitor.  In our part of SE Utah, if you need affordable computer parts of middling quality right away, you drive the 160 mile round trip to the nearest Walmart, located in the shadow of Mesa Verde in Cortez, Colorado.  He left late and returned [...]

Winners of WIZ’s 2010 Spring Poetry Runoff Contest

Monday, May 10th, 2010

As everyone probably knows, the winner of the Spring Poetry Runoff’s Most Popular Vote Award is Karen Kelsay for her poem, “Waiting for Spring.”  In fact, Karen’s fans filled the top three spots with her poems, all of which, as I’ve noted before, have lovely minstrel qualities.  “Waiting for Spring” exhibits not only Karen’s trademark [...]

A big “Thank you” to Spring Runoff participants

Monday, May 10th, 2010

I would like to thank personally each participant in the 2010 Spring Poetry Runoff Celebration.  You helped make the Runoff a very successful event this year, not just for me but for readers and other participants.  I hope everyone enjoyed the poetry and all-around gathering of talent as much as I did.  The list of [...]

Vote for your favorite Spring Poetry Runoff 2010 poems

Monday, May 3rd, 2010

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 [...]

WIZ’s Spring Poetry Runoff Winds Down

Thursday, April 29th, 2010

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, [...]

“Seasonal Attitude” by Patricia Karamesines

Thursday, April 29th, 2010

I would say I feel cold but no
That’s not right—I feel dark.
Winter has begun glooming bone
Half so bright with fire as once cheered.
This arm and shoulder upon which I fell—
They make a rough fit.  Especially
I feel it there. My eyes rummage
Squat days for glints. In my chest
There’s a catch, these lungs losing
Appetite, thin instants off [...]

“Winter Relapse” by Alan Mitchell

Wednesday, April 28th, 2010

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 [...]