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 [...]
“Look, here’s Fezzika,” my mother said, bending down to point out the Woodhouse toad tucked under the garden stone. We had discovered the amphibian’s house a few days earlier, and I was fascinated by the placement choice. She had dug into the soil under a cornerstone edging the flowerbed beside the main path through the [...]
Narrator: It was a sunny day in the town Pudding but no one could see it. There was a cloud in the way of the sun.
Boy: I can’t see anything!
The mayor: We must do something!
All: But what?
Town folks: Ask the king!
Mayor: Not the king!
Boy: That is a good idea.
Mayor: The king does not rule the [...]
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 [...]
October, what will you bestow? You’ve left
the tulips and long daffodils unborn,
and spreading ferns aloof in darkest glens;
your brown leaves have revealed a scarlet thorn
to snag the frosty mornings. Mallards will
not light upon the weir, and open skies
remove their lightest blue. The fallow rose
is waiting for the spring–and like my eyes,
discolored branches search for green. [...]
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 [...]
We’ve added new pictures to the revolving gallery, not many because we spent much of the summer working at surviving rather than traipsing about the backrocks looking for photo ops. You’ll recognize a few favorites we left up: the aspens in Kane Gulch, scarlet gilia, the boot and hoof prints, etc.
Here’s a list of the [...]
My happy thanks to everyone who participated in WIZ’s People Month. My list of folks for whom I’ve felt deeply grateful includes:
Th.
Nephi Anderson (via Th.’s gravelly voice)
Mark Bennion
Tyler Chadwick
greenfrog
green mormon architect
Elizabeth R.
And, of course, many thanks to WIZ’s loyal readers and commenters.
I appreciate each writer’s help keeping People Month on WIZ interesting and fun. We’ll do it again next [...]
Listen to Patricia reading “The Pear Tree.”
When early autumn’s storm wrung from the clouds
Summer, wearing the last thundering rain thin
And sharp on the wind’s rasp; when thorns
Of the first frost bloomed over the grass,
And the morning glory hung brown and bitten
On the garden fence; on those first nights
Of cold window glass and the drip of [...]
Wilderness Interface Zone is happy to announce the arrival of its spring photo gallery, now showing in the photo box in the upper right-hand corner of the page displayed on your screen. It’s a little late, I know, but flowers, tree leaves, migratory birds, and torpid amphibians and reptiles have only emerged in abundance here in San Juan County, Utah over the last three weeks. [...]