Skulls and other crumbling caves invite
Smaller things to enter them. So this mill,
Detail jumbling as its carpentry unlaced,
Called me down to its hollow, where irrigation
Swilled in a greener-than-grass surface algae,
Emerald, tepid, moating around the swayback
Structure tossed up by waves of receded grain.
Blue damselflies, thin as flower petals,
Coupled in a fringe around the pool.
Beyond that water [...]
The poplar’s shadow on her hand
Indicates a tree in spring.
Willets, catbirds, and broncos all hear
Big-hipped nature dancing across the Rockies
Stripping and putting on the many faces of
A weather-beaten land:
Green, red, brown, and white,
The flag of summer on the horizon.
They are indivisible incompatibles,
This landscape and
The mutterings of a middle woman.
Her words lie naked in a field,
Lost [...]
I cannot kick a mound of maple leaves
or see a pumpkin peeking from the vine
before the frost and not remember hills
where summer laid her green. A distant line
of poplars gleams like curtains made of coins;
it shakes at passing clouds. And everywhere
the magpie hops, I see another sign
of hawthorns beckoning the winter air
to breathe upon the [...]
(for my father)
Late afternoon came floating down the creek.
The Appalachia air chilled gradually;
Ringlets formed round shivers on a pool
Where mayflies burst its skin, and theirs, some trailing
Papery shells behind them in their flight.
Brown trout missiled the sylphs, arched and slapped
The surface, falling back, while I cast toward
The trembling pool, slowly wound my line in,
Looked up. [...]
When the moon becomes a mellow pear
on twilight’s bough, and stars swirl up like maple leaves
before they’re swept into the dawn, I’ve often
walked this garden where the voice of whippoorwills
would carry remnant melodies across long, dusky
hours. At times I feel this eastern breeze has lifted
me, somehow, beyond the soft-lit sloping fields
and conifer lined hills. To [...]
The intertwining of spirituality with images, metaphors, analogies, parables and other language containing strong veins of agrarian- and wilderness-oriented content is part of what gives scripture its power. Along with a large proportion of the rest of this Bible-reading country, as Mormons increasingly move inside and explore via the electronic frontier, scripture becomes one of [...]
by Karen Kelsay
She is frail, her veil of happiness is
replaced in turn by fear, then bewilderment.
Today, she presents a branch before
garden lilies, like a child might coax a parakeet
to perch. Beside the magnolia, where shadows
meet white geraniums she once planted, the caregiver
settles her in a wooden lawn chair. Uneasy beneath
summer’s glare, she retreats to confines [...]
by P. G. Karamesines
On the east rim the fire rose blossoms,
Its pink-gold tongues
Blushing rock and sand,
Licking up night’s tinajas.
In sand grains beneath me,
The coolness of stars—
Those winking violets
That glamour the shadow.
My face
Inclines to the light.
Hands soften, spread—
Blood blooms.
______________________________________________________
Originally published in Glyphs III: Poems and Stories of the Colorado Plateau, Moab Poets and Writers Inc. Regional [...]
(For Leslie Norris)
By Tyler Chadwick
Day’s last reflections
catch on wind-swept ripples
as two geese throw shadows
across watered silence.
Embraced by echoes,
each circles the other.
Tracing this current,
I watch Hudson’s pair
venturing back
across the continent:
Her wings bear no scars
of hapless encounter
with fox or wolf or man;
his body carries
no hunter’s spray,
the lead that felled him
to the dogs. They bask
in this dusking plane,
watching [...]
by P. G. Karamesines
The weedy clouds of spring
Grow on the peaks, break off, then drift
In tall gardens over sandstone blue
With the bruise of squalls. I stand
Two thousand feet above the coils
Of a river that has burnt its way,
Leaving behind the red stubble
Of the canyons. Buds of lightning
Burst and wither at once;
The air is rutted with [...]