Beside the bank where black swans often lie
in twos, beneath wild fruit trees near the stream
where Chinese geese move single file across
the water like a strand of flags that gleam
with little angled feathertips of light,
I heard her speak. It was a quiet voice,
like summer clouds that weep along low hills
of poplar groves then peacefully rejoice
in [...]
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 [...]
The usual warnings continue to apply. Parts One and Two here and here.
April 22, 2010, Earth Day and M’s birthday. Twenty-four hours have passed since the doctor put his words out there. I’m still hot with anger and grief, still breaking into sobs at the slightest twinge of thought. I’ve examined M repeatedly for signs [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]