It snowed today, for the first time. October 6th.
When my family moved to southeast Idaho, we knew that Winter was one of the by-products we were choosing. That “W” is capitalized, because winters here are real winters—you couldn’t survive without shelter. In Utah Valley, where we’ve lived the last ten years, you likely couldn’t either, [...]
I keep the totem in my pocket
as a harp song sung with a
steady bear paw, wedged
between your photograph
and an eagle feather. Before
we parted, you whispered it
would serve me well on rainy
days when my road was too
much to stand on. This morning
I pulled the car to the shoulder
to watch an osprey hover with
a cold sun. I [...]
WIZ readers and writers: Remember that the deadline for Torrey House Press’s Creative Literary Nonfiction Contest (2,000-10,000 words) is midnight, September 30th. First Prize: $1000. Second Prize: $250. Third Prize: $100. There’s a $25 entry fee.
Torrey House is offering a special arrangement for entrants who can present “reasonable evidence” that they’ve bought Torrey House’s first [...]
Strange vibrations, east of coal country.
Black sky, dusted by filmy cirro-nebula.
Rumbling on a trestle, high above the Green,
train whistles legend’s high, lonesome sound.
Highest water in a decade, but river’s
calmed tonight, lapping in a little cove.
Noses streaked with sunblock, bodies
with Skin-so-Soft, hair silted with residue
of a day on the water, we’re children
on the verge of adolescence, [...]
She rests on her grandmother’s quilt,
the Spring air cool, but sun warming—healing
Winter’s darkness.
She, face turned to the sun,
is thinking back on the line of mothers
who gave her being and body . . . She thinks about
an Eve, way back . . .
Out of some Cambrian longing
her distant grandmother emerged
hard shelled, many limbed,
singular in purpose, only [...]
If you look at WIZ’s short blogroll, you’ll see I added a link to a new site: Our Mother’s Keeper, “a LDS group blog dedicated to environmentalism, ecofeminsim and environmental justice issues that result from the changes the planet is currently undergoing.” To read more about Our Mother’s Keeper, click here.
Sorry it took so long [...]
Coming soon to a mailbox (or computer) near you: Dialogue’s environmental issue. Several Wilderness Interface Zone contributors are included therein–congratulations, friends! Frequent WIZ contributor Steven Peck guest edited this issue.
Table of contents:
Page Author Title
Mary Toscano Front Cover
Inside Cover, Title Page
v Edwin Firmage, Jr. Letters
1 Steven L. Peck Why [...]
Come slip between atmospheres of memory.
Knead yourself into cumulus—your airline ticket,
your pushbike, your liahona—with fingers like
the fingers of Doré’s sun. Sift marrow
until you feel soil part, feel the fern press its head
through mist then flatten against sudden emptiness.
Until you can roam sky without tripping on God’s
hem, can cloak in light
without singeing every shadow to ash, [...]
Night falls,
then recedes,
mourning sleepless darkness.
“Tempt me not,” saith the Lord God.
The spire’s skeleton reaching upward like a plea for shielding.
May is a slight way,
April an end to Chillihuani
March a crimson memory,
February a bursting crag,
and January a duality of whiteness.
Morning rises,
then proceeds,
mourning spiritual atrophy.
_____________________________________________________________
Tod Robbins was born in Salt Lake City, Utah, and now lives in [...]
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 [...]