Wilderness Interface Zone

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 [...]

Once I lay my troubles aside
in Adam-ondi-Ahman,
I’ll count my friends, all around me,
new bodies at the coming
of Christ from heaven
and light from within.
Once I lay my sins behind
and bow before the peace of the dove,
I’ll count my children
by the crowns on their heads
and alight my hands on air.
I’ll lay my weary side
upon the fields of [...]

Wilderness Interface Zone would like to thank participants who made our Love of Nature, Nature of Love Month such a pretty thing this time around.  The list includes:
Karen Kelsay
Jonathon Penny
Tyler Chadwick
Lou Davies James
Judith Curtis
Michael Lee Johnson
You all helped WIZ celebrate love and nature with heart and high style.  Thanks so much.
Also, thanks go to our [...]

Warning: As usual, this Retro Review may contain spoilers.
Don’t be fooled: Despite its somewhat predictable cavalry v. Indians plot and the flaming arrows shot directly at the audience to showcase the movie industry’s earliest 3-D special effects, The Charge at Feather River is about relationships—between misfit soldiers and their leaders, between rivals for a woman, [...]

Keep your craggy, up-thrust mountain peaks!
Your chasms and your cliffsides roughly made
From clattering and shattering of plates
In the devil’s galley by some shade!
I’ll have my soft-edged tinder coulee view,
Tan and green, and gently, supply formed
Like mother earth was always thought to be:
Green-crowned, or seascape prairie grass adorned,
Our traces nestled, sheltered, on her knee.
There’s hope in [...]

1. 27 November 2006, Morning
They’d said it would come,
with December just around the bend.
Still it caught me off guard. Outside
in pajama pants, t-shirt, bare feet, waiting
for the dog to make: the first flakes layered
cornered leaves with winter’s afterbirth.
2. 16 July 2003: Our First
The day Sidney was born,
her water came
on the bathroom floor. As I’d layered
a [...]

A man could almost fall in love
With this sun-dyed black-gold place
Could go for arid mile on mile
And never see God’s face
And thus avoid disgrace.
A man could drift and wander
Change his shape like blood-red dunes
Pour his freedom out like water
And his faith like feckless spume.
After all, there’s ample room.
_____________________________________________________________
For Jonathon’s bio and links to other poems [...]

Remember wild, ungardened greens?
Dark mulchy woods of unkempt trees?
That broad, telestial paradise
Of birds and bugs and field mice?
Remember snows of varied hues?
High drifts? spring thaws? fat summer dews?
And fragrant, flatland buzzing air?
Paint-palette, musty harvest fare?
We’ve none of those in this dry place
Where seasons are a figment of degrees
And landmarks fickle as a ninja bride:
Trembling within, [...]

Fallow soil, windblown, is a rigid latticework
Pressed hard against patchwork fields etched with snow.
A river, drawn amblingly, God’s Hancock doodle,
Flows its cursive way across the whole.
Jealous of its motion, frozen lakes and ponds
Lie low and sullen in their teardrop bowls.
______________________________________________________________
More from Jonathon here and here.