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 [...]
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 [...]
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, [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
(February–March 2000)
crimson-honey sky
across the Hokianga
crimson-honey tide
but no waka to pierce
the bay’s narrow hips
*
crimson-honey sand
across the Hokianga
crimson-honey sky
but only one cumulus
to lick the bay’s narrow tongue
*
crimson-honey night
across the Hokianga
but no moon
to walk empty shores
sip crimson-honey tea
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For Tyler’s bio and other Spring Poetry Runoff contributions, click here and here.
*Non-contest submission*
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 [...]