%1 http://coloradoencyclopedia.org/ en Education at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science http://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/education-denver-museum-nature-and-science <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--title--encyclopedia-article.html.twig x field--node--title.html.twig * field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--title.html.twig * field--string.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">Education at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--uid--encyclopedia-article.html.twig x field--node--uid.html.twig * field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--uid.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--uid.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'username' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/user/username.html.twig' --> <span lang="" about="/users/yongli" typeof="schema:Person" property="schema:name" datatype="">yongli</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/user/username.html.twig' --> </span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--uid.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--created--encyclopedia-article.html.twig x field--node--created.html.twig * field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--created.html.twig * field--created.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--created.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'time' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/time.html.twig' --> <time datetime="2020-07-31T15:28:24-06:00" title="Friday, July 31, 2020 - 15:28" class="datetime">Fri, 07/31/2020 - 15:28</time> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/time.html.twig' --> </span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--created.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'addtoany_standard' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * addtoany-standard--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * addtoany-standard--node.html.twig x addtoany-standard.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/addtoany/templates/addtoany-standard.html.twig' --> <span class="a2a_kit a2a_kit_size_32 addtoany_list" data-a2a-url="http://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/education-denver-museum-nature-and-science" data-a2a-title="Education at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science"><a class="a2a_dd addtoany_share" href="https://www.addtoany.com/share#url=http%3A%2F%2Fcoloradoencyclopedia.org%2Farticle%2Feducation-denver-museum-nature-and-science&amp;title=Education%20at%20the%20Denver%20Museum%20of%20Nature%20and%20Science"></a><a class="a2a_button_facebook"></a><a class="a2a_button_twitter"></a><a class="a2a_button_email"></a></span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/addtoany/templates/addtoany-standard.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--body--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--body.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--body.html.twig * field--text-with-summary.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item" id="id-body"><p>The <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/denver-museum-nature-science-0"><strong>Denver Museum of Nature and Science</strong></a> (DMNS), previously the Colorado Museum of Natural History, was established in 1900. Although the museum has made many contributions to archaeology and anthropology, it has also played a crucial role in educating Coloradans about science and natural history.</p> <p>The museum represented the culmination of the shared visions of <strong>Edwin Carter</strong>, a naturalist based in <strong>Breckenridge</strong>, and John Francis Campion, a Denver businessman. The two men believed that such a museum would not only promote the rapidly growing city’s importance within the region, but also educate and entertain citizens. When Carter died in 1901, his private natural history collection of birds and mammals formed the basis of the Colorado Museum of Natural History. The museum opened to the public in 1908, providing citizens with the opportunity to experience and learn about the natural world of Colorado and beyond.</p> <p>Like New York City’s American Museum of Natural History (AMNH), on which the DMNS was modeled, and many other museums at the turn of the century, the guiding mission of DMNS has always focused on public science education. According to its founding document, the museum aimed to “encourage and aid the study of Natural Science [and] to advance the general knowledge of kindred subjects.” To further this mission the early exhibits at the DMNS concentrated on the natural world of the Rocky Mountain region. One of the most successful education programs supported educators in Denver public schools with their nature studies curriculum. Begun in the early 1910s, the partnership with the school system continues today. Thousands of schoolchildren had their first experiences with the natural world at the museum. For many children and their caretakers in the 1950s and 1960s, viewing and understanding the natural world was only possible by visiting the habitat dioramas, looking at displays of minerals, or watching a nature movie at the museum on a Saturday morning. The careful placement, labeling, and interpretation of specimens offered the museum-going public a new way to learn about the natural world.</p> <p>The museum’s governing board originally focused on collecting and exhibiting zoological specimens and objects from Colorado. As a relatively new state (Colorado became a state in 1876), little was known about the natural plants and wildlife in the region. A few local naturalists—scientists who study plants and animals—studied the wildlife of the Rocky Mountains and Great Plains, but these studies were rarely disseminated to the general public. The Denver museum became a space where this new knowledge of Colorado’s wildlife could be shared with and enjoyed by a wide audience.</p> <p>The museum’s first professional director, Jesse D. Figgins, arrived in 1910 from AMNH. An experienced exhibit designer and field collector, Figgins proved to be a major influence on the intellectual development and organization of the museum. He introduced new collecting methods to ensure that the museum’s collections featured a wider representation of Colorado’s wildlife. Then, employing techniques learned at the AMNH, he set about designing and building new freestanding cases to hold animal groups. The groups often included a particular collection of animals mounted and displayed in front of a hand-painted flat background, which represented the animals’ natural habitat. The museum visitor viewed the animals from the front through a glass screen. These early dioramas became important educational exhibits for museum visitors.</p> <p>Figgins expanded the museum’s collections to include paleontology (the study of prehistoric animals) and archaeology. The first Colorado dinosaur to arrive at the museum was a partial skeleton of diplodocus in 1915. Dall DeWeese, a local resident, found the dinosaur in the Garden Park Fossil Area in <strong>Cañon City</strong>. DeWeese was concerned that Colorado’s dinosaurs and other fossils were being lost to eastern museums and universities. After DeWeese’s discovery, Figgins sent fieldworkers to find fossil sites around the state, and by 1920 one of the museum’s most productive sites for late Eocene mammals was discovered on the eastern plains of Colorado. A few years later, in the 1930s, Frederick Kessler—a Cañon City high school teacher—took a group of his students into the Garden Park Fossil area, where they found another dinosaur: stegosaurus. The stegosaurus became Colorado’s state fossil in 1982, and Kessler’s specimen is now on display in the walk-through exhibit <em>Prehistoric Journey, </em>which opened in 1995 and explores Colorado’s ancient environments. Today, paleontologists at the museum work throughout the American West and around the world, bringing back new discoveries and information about the earth’s past to share with museum visitors and the scientific community.</p> <p>The museum is renowned for the detailed habitat dioramas that represent different landscapes and animals from all over the world. Alfred M. Bailey, the second museum director, is credited with creating the larger diorama halls in the Denver museum. When the dioramas first appeared in the late 1930s and early 1940s, many visitors experienced the wildlife and landscapes of far-off places for the first time. Habitat dioramas, imitations of the natural environment, are large constructions built into the exhibit hall. They have curved backgrounds depicting scenic views that represent actual locations. In the foreground of the diorama, exhibit designers and workers place plants and rocks—accessories—similar to those found at the site, while in the middle ground they place the specimens of mammals and birds that fieldworkers collected from that area. The placement of specimens and accessories creates a three-dimensional effect that, in essence, tricks the eye of the beholder making it appear as if viewers are actually witnessing a natural scene through a glass window.</p> <p>Collecting zoological specimens and displaying them in the dioramas introduced the science of ecology to museum visitors. Visitors were able to see how different environments supported a variety of plant life and animals and learned about animals that were endangered or had become extinct as a result of human activity. Many visitors experienced the natural worlds of Alaska, the Amazon Basin, Antarctica, Australia, and Botswana through the work of museum fieldworkers, who had visited those places from the 1920s to the early 1970s. In an era before today’s nature movies and television documentaries helped the public learn about the intricacies of ecology, the DMNS’s first habitat dioramas served this function.</p> <p>The construction of the Botswana Hall dioramas in the 1970s coincided with the emergence of concern over the killing and poaching of Africa’s large mammals. By displaying African wildlife in a variety of environments, museum curators conveyed the connections between wildlife and the environment and helped raise awareness of the ecological pressures facing faraway places and animals. Moreover, for the first time at the museum, the Botswana Hall included exhibits connecting humans to the environment. The Botswana exhibit placed humans within nature instead of separated from it—a fundamental shift in the museum’s pedagogy.</p> <p>Since it opened in 1908, the DMNS has played an important role in educating Coloradans and others about the natural world, from the deep past through paleontology to the modern era through the display of wildlife specimens in habitat dioramas. The museum’s commitment to science education continues today.</p> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-author--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--field-author.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--field-author.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-author field--type-entity-reference field--label-above" id="id-field-author"> <div class="field__label" id="id-field-author">Author</div> <div class='field__items'> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-author"><a href="/author/donofrio-karen-lloyd" hreflang="und">D’Onofrio, Karen Lloyd </a></div> </div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-keyword--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--field-keyword.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--field-keyword.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-keyword field--type-entity-reference field--label-above" id="id-field-keyword"> <div class="field__label" id="id-field-keyword">Keywords</div> <div class='field__items'> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/denver-museum-nature-and-science" hreflang="en">denver museum of nature and science</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/natural-history" hreflang="en">natural history</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/science" hreflang="en">science</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/edwin-carter" hreflang="en">edwin carter</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/wildlife" hreflang="en">wildlife</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/education" hreflang="en">education</a></div> </div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'links__node' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * links--node.html.twig x links--inline.html.twig * links--node.html.twig * links.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/navigation/links--inline.html.twig' --> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/navigation/links--inline.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-references-html--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--field-references-html.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--field-references-html.html.twig * field--text-long.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-references-html field--type-text-long field--label-above" id="id-field-references-html"> <div class="field__label" id="id-field-references-html">References</div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-references-html"><p>Victoria Cain, “<a href="http://www.common-place-archives.org/vol-12/no-02/cain/">Professor Carter and His Collection: Amateur Naturalists and Their Museums</a>,” <em>Common-Place: The Interactive Journal of Early American Life </em>12, no. 2 (January 2012).</p> <p>Charles H. Hanington, “The Colorado Museum of Natural History: An Historical Sketch, <em>Proceedings of the Colorado Museum of Natural History </em>17, no. 1 (March 1, 1938).</p> <p>Kirk Johnson et al., “Denver’s Natural History Museum: A History,” <em>Denver Museum of Nature and Science Annals</em>, no. 4 (December 31, 2013).</p> <p>Kirk Johnson and Richard K. Stucky, <em>Prehistoric Journey: A History of Life on Earth </em>(Golden, CO: Fulcrum Publishing, 2006).</p> <p>Patricia Monaco, “A Short History of Dinosaur Collecting in the Garden Park Fossil Area, Cañon City, Colorado,” <em>Modern Geology </em>23, no. 4 (July 1998).</p> <p>Karen Wonders, “Habitat Dioramas and the Issue of Nativeness,” <em>Landscape Research </em>28, no. 1 (2003).</p> </div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-additional-information-htm--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--field-additional-information-htm.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--field-additional-information-htm.html.twig * field--text-long.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-additional-information-htm field--type-text-long field--label-above" id="id-field-additional-information-htm"> <div class="field__label" id="id-field-additional-information-htm">Additional Information</div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-additional-information-htm"><p>Bureau of Land Management, “<a href="http://www.blm.gov/co/st/en/fo/rgfo/paleontology.html">Geology and Paleontology</a>,” updated October 15, 2015.</p> <p>Denver Museum of Nature and Science, “<a href="https://www.dmns.org/science/museum-scientists/annual-reports">Annual Reports</a>.”</p> <p>Garden Park Fossil Area, “<a href="https://www.handsontheland.org/garden-park/history-kessler.html?showall=1">History</a>.”</p> </div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> Fri, 31 Jul 2020 21:28:24 +0000 yongli 3400 at http://coloradoencyclopedia.org Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer http://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/rosemerry-wahtola-trommer <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--title--encyclopedia-article.html.twig x field--node--title.html.twig * field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--title.html.twig * field--string.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--uid--encyclopedia-article.html.twig x field--node--uid.html.twig * field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--uid.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--uid.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'username' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/user/username.html.twig' --> <span lang="" about="/users/yongli" typeof="schema:Person" property="schema:name" datatype="">yongli</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/user/username.html.twig' --> </span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--uid.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--created--encyclopedia-article.html.twig x field--node--created.html.twig * field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--created.html.twig * field--created.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--created.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'time' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/time.html.twig' --> <time datetime="2019-01-28T09:44:23-07:00" title="Monday, January 28, 2019 - 09:44" class="datetime">Mon, 01/28/2019 - 09:44</time> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/time.html.twig' --> </span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--created.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'addtoany_standard' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * addtoany-standard--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * addtoany-standard--node.html.twig x addtoany-standard.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/addtoany/templates/addtoany-standard.html.twig' --> <span class="a2a_kit a2a_kit_size_32 addtoany_list" data-a2a-url="http://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/rosemerry-wahtola-trommer" data-a2a-title="Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer"><a class="a2a_dd addtoany_share" href="https://www.addtoany.com/share#url=http%3A%2F%2Fcoloradoencyclopedia.org%2Farticle%2Frosemerry-wahtola-trommer&amp;title=Rosemerry%20Wahtola%20Trommer"></a><a class="a2a_button_facebook"></a><a class="a2a_button_twitter"></a><a class="a2a_button_email"></a></span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/addtoany/templates/addtoany-standard.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--body--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--body.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--body.html.twig * field--text-with-summary.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item" id="id-body"><p class="rtecenter"><img alt="Poet: Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer" src="/sites/default/files/Rosemerry_Wahtola_Trommer.jpg" style="width: 450px; height: 675px;" /></p>&#13; &#13; <p>Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer lives in Placerville on the banks of the San Miguel River. She served as <strong><a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/san-miguel-county">San Miguel County</a></strong>’s first poet laureate and as <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/western-slope"><strong>Western Slope</strong></a> Poet Laureate. She teaches poetry for twelve-step recovery programs, hospice, mindfulness retreats, women’s retreats, teachers and more. An avid trail runner and Nordic skier, she believes in the power of practice and has been writing a poem a day since 2006. She has eleven collections of poetry, and her work has appeared in <em>O Magazine</em> and on <em>A Prairie Home Companion. </em>She graduated from Golden High in 1987. One-word mantra: Adjust.  <a href="https://www.wordwoman.com/">www.wordwoman.com</a></p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Poems</h2>&#13; &#13; <h3>Trusting Ludwig</h3>&#13; &#13; <p>It is slow and soft, the first movement—<br />&#13; the right hand sweeping in smooth triple meter,</p>&#13; &#13; <p>the left hand singing against it.<br />&#13; Minor, the key, and mysterious</p>&#13; &#13; <p>the melody, slow, it is slow and soft,<br />&#13; a walk through moonlight.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>What is it that sometimes rises in us,<br />&#13; this urge toward crescendo, toward swell?</p>&#13; &#13; <p>I feel it in my hands as they move<br />&#13; across the stoic keys, an urgency,</p>&#13; &#13; <p>a reaching toward climax, a pressing<br />&#13; insistence, as if to sing louder is to sing</p>&#13; &#13; <p>more true. But over and over again,<br />&#13; Beethoven reminds us, <em>piano</em>, <em>piano,</em></p>&#13; &#13; <p>his markings all through the music.<br />&#13; Oh beauty in restraint. It is soft,</p>&#13; &#13; <p>the moonlight, a delicate fragrance,<br />&#13; it is heart opening, the tune,</p>&#13; &#13; <p>it is growing in me, this lesson in just<br />&#13; how profoundly the quiet</p>&#13; &#13; <p>can move us. And the hands,<br />&#13; as they learn to trust in softness,</p>&#13; &#13; <p>how beautifully they bloom.  </p>&#13; &#13; <p>First published in <em>Naked for Tea</em> (Able Muse Press, 2018)</p>&#13; &#13; <h3>Once Upon</h3>&#13; &#13; <p>There is a night you must travel,<br />&#13; alone, of course, though perhaps<br />&#13; there is someone asleep next to you.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>The darkness knows exactly what<br />&#13; to say to snap every sapling of hope<br />&#13; that has dared to grow. It poisons</p>&#13; &#13; <p>the gardens, even kills the prettier weeds.<br />&#13; For me, it hisses, though perhaps<br />&#13; you have heard a different voice.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>The effect is always the same—<br />&#13; a self-doubt that grows up like thorns<br />&#13; around a fabled castle. What</p>&#13; &#13; <p>you wouldn’t give for sleep.<br />&#13; But it is the awakeness that saves you—<br />&#13; the way that the doubt works</p>&#13; &#13; <p>like an unforgiving mirror<br />&#13; and shows you all the places<br />&#13; that most need your attention.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>It was never the fairies who bestowed the gifts,<br />&#13; it was doubt all along that entered<br />&#13; you and blessed you so that when</p>&#13; &#13; <p>at last the morning came, you were<br />&#13; ready to rise and meet the world, ready<br />&#13; to be your own true love, flawed</p>&#13; &#13; <p>though you are, ready to commit<br />&#13; more deeply to serving a story<br />&#13; greater than your own.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>First published in <em>Naked for Tea</em> (Able Muse Press, 2018)</p>&#13; &#13; <h3>Latin 101</h3>&#13; &#13; <p>As a matter of course, we begin<br />&#13; with the impossible—conjugating love.<br /><em>Amo, amas, amat.</em></p>&#13; &#13; <p>My son and I sit on the couch and chant<br />&#13; the old syllables that have informed so many tongues.<br /><em>Amamus, amatis, amant. </em></p>&#13; &#13; <p>It’s almost always the first lesson<br />&#13; when learning this language<br />&#13; that few speak anymore.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Every other language I’ve studied begins<br />&#13; with <em>to have, to go, to be</em>, but here we begin<br />&#13; where humans prove our humanness.</p>&#13; &#13; <p><em>I love. You love. He loves. </em><br />&#13; The news everyday is full of the ways<br />&#13; we fall short. Still, we devote our lives</p>&#13; &#13; <p>to these six possibilities.<br /><em>We love. You love. They love. </em><br />&#13; Everything depends on this.</p>&#13; &#13; <p><em>Amo, amas, amat.</em><br />&#13; To my son, they are still only sounds.<br />&#13; He thrills that he can remember them.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>But his mother, she wanders the conjugations<br />&#13; like paths, <em>semitae</em>, as if stepping through fields<br />&#13; of flowers or war with no idea where the feet</p>&#13; &#13; <p>might land next, hoping that though the language<br />&#13; has died, there are still clues in it for the living.<br />&#13; Like where to begin.</p>&#13; &#13; <p><em>Amamus, amatis, amant.</em><br />&#13; Some lessons are simple to memorize.<br />&#13; Some we practice for a lifetime.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>First published in <em>Naked for Tea</em> (Able Muse Press, 2018)</p>&#13; &#13; <h3>After Many Attempts </h3>&#13; &#13; <p>Just because it wasn’t here yesterday<br />&#13; doesn’t mean it won’t be here today.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Some things arrive only in their own time.<br />&#13; Just because I am talking about morels</p>&#13; &#13; <p>doesn’t mean I’m not talking about love.<br />&#13; And here it is, golden and misshapen,</p>&#13; &#13; <p>something I step over once before discovering.<br />&#13; I mean, isn’t it wonderful when sometimes</p>&#13; &#13; <p>we choose to show up and then, well,<br />&#13; it’s not really an accident, is it,</p>&#13; &#13; <p>that we find ourselves<br />&#13; with our hands, our hearts so full.<br />&#13; First published in <em>Fungi Magazine</em></p>&#13; &#13; <h3>Picking Up a Hitchhiker in May</h3>&#13; &#13; <p><em>The burial of the dead is Humanity 101.<br />&#13; —Thomas Lynch, undertaker and poet</em></p>&#13; &#13; <p>It’s messy when they die<br />&#13; in winter, he says. The dirt<br />&#13; is too cold to work with then.<br />&#13; I tell him I will consider this<br />&#13; when I die. Just give me two-weeks’<br />&#13; notice, he says, quoting a joke,<br />&#13; and it occurs to me humor<br />&#13; must be an unwritten<br />&#13; prerequisite for a grave digger.<br />&#13; I ask him what he thinks<br />&#13; about the recent uproar in Boston,<br />&#13; no one wanting the bomber<br />&#13; buried in their own backyard.<br />&#13; Well, he says, I’ve always thought<br />&#13; we should have a special section<br />&#13; for the politicians. We could put<br />&#13; him here with them—in a place where<br />&#13; we let the dogs run.<br />&#13; In the space before I laugh,<br />&#13; I remember the story<br />&#13; the undertaker told about how<br />&#13; in the middle ages they considered<br />&#13; suicide the ultimate crime.<br />&#13; But since you can’t punish a dead man,<br />&#13; they took out their ire on his corpse<br />&#13; and buried it at a crossroads<br />&#13; to be trod on forever. He said,<br />&#13; “If we do not take care of dead humans,<br />&#13; we become less human ourselves.”<br />&#13; The man next to me says,<br />&#13; “You know, I give every person I bury<br />&#13; the gravedigger’s promise.”<br />&#13; We are almost to the cemetery gate.<br />&#13; “I say, I’m the last person who’s ever gonna<br />&#13; let you down, and the last one<br />&#13; who’ll ever throw dirt on you.”<br />&#13; He laughs a laugh so real<br />&#13; I can smell the earth thawing in it.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>First published in <em>New Verse News</em></p>&#13; &#13; <h3>Part of the Design</h3>&#13; &#13; <p>My son and I lean together over the thin resistor,<br />&#13; the nine volt battery, the LEDs in blue and red.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>We fuss with the copper tape as it twists and sticks<br />&#13; where we don’t want it to stick. But eventually,</p>&#13; &#13; <p>there is light, a small blue light. He can’t stop looking<br />&#13; at the glow on the table. I can’t stop looking</p>&#13; &#13; <p>at the glow in him. I remember so little<br />&#13; about how electricity works. Something</p>&#13; &#13; <p>about electrons being pushed through the circuit.<br />&#13; Ours is simple, a series circuit, with only one way</p>&#13; &#13; <p>for the electrons to go. But I know that no matter<br />&#13; how complex a circuit, the same laws of physics apply.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>It’s like love. No matter how intricate the scenario,<br />&#13; the laws themselves are always the same.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>There are two laws of love, I tell myself.<br />&#13; One: you can’t predict anything. And two,</p>&#13; &#13; <p>it will change you. For good. I swear<br />&#13; as I stare at him now, I can feel the electrons</p>&#13; &#13; <p>moving in my own body. Or are those tears,<br />&#13; twin currents following familiar paths.</p>&#13; &#13; <h3>After Playing on the Parent Team in the Mathlete Olympiad</h3>&#13; &#13; <p>Odd joy in the pink eraser rubbings,<br />&#13; joy in the silence just after the timer says start,<br />&#13; joy in the turning of the inner cogs<br />&#13; and the way that the numbers<br />&#13; sprint across the page,<br />&#13; joy in the scratch of the pencil, the stumble<br />&#13; of confidence, in the scrapping of the route<br />&#13; so that a new route can emerge,<br />&#13; joy in arriving at an answer,<br />&#13; an answer so certain you can label it<br />&#13; with units and circle it and know<br />&#13; that tomorrow it would turn out<br />&#13; the same way again, not like any<br />&#13; other part of your life.</p>&#13; &#13; <h3>How It Might Happen</h3>&#13; &#13; <p>The baby black swift is born behind a waterfall.<br />&#13; It never leaves its nest until one autumn day<br />&#13; it leaves the damp familiar and starts to fly.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Though it has never flown before, it will not land<br />&#13; until it reaches Brazil, thousands of miles away.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>There is, perhaps, a wing inside forgiveness.<br />&#13; Just because it has never flown before,<br />&#13; just because it’s never seen beyond the watery veil<br />&#13; does not mean that it won’t instantly learn<br />&#13; what it can do.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Like the baby black swift, it has no idea<br />&#13; what it’s flying toward. It only knows<br />&#13; that it must fly and not stop until it is time to stop.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>It sounds so miraculous, so nearly impossible.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>It is not a matter of courage. It is simply<br />&#13; what rises up to be done, the urge to follow<br />&#13; some inaudible call that says now, now.</p>&#13; &#13; <h3>Throwing Away the Canvas</h3>&#13; &#13; <p><em>A response of sorts to Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18</em></p>&#13; &#13; <p>Not that I wasn’t fond of it—the blues<br />&#13; and golds and thick brush strokes—perhaps it was<br /><em>because</em> I was so fond of it I threw<br />&#13; the art away, that life-size portrait of<br />&#13; eternal summer, mine, the painting in<br />&#13; which one hand reaches for the sun, the other<br />&#13; grows dark roots into the earth. Now all<br />&#13; that lives of those bright lines are these two hands<br />&#13; that painted them. With something less than care<br />&#13; I rolled the canvas tight and took it to<br />&#13; the trash, the company of grapefruit rinds<br />&#13; and last year’s mail. By tea, I’ve gotten used<br />&#13; to how the wall looks—empty, open, free—<br />&#13; already dreamed what else these hands might do.</p>&#13; &#13; <h3>Joyful, Joyful</h3>&#13; &#13; <p>From the back row, no one can see<br />&#13; that the flute player’s white oxford shirt<br />&#13; is misbuttoned. His dirty blonde hair<br />&#13; falls into his eyes.  He tosses it back<br />&#13; with a flick of his head, picks up his instrument<br />&#13; and focuses his attention on the conductor.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>With a lurch, the sixth-grade band launches<br />&#13; into the last section of Beethoven’s 9<sup>th</sup>,<br />&#13; and the familiar tune of Ode to Joy<br />&#13; brightens the dim auditorium.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>The conductor keeps perfect time,<br />&#13; and the students, though stilted,<br />&#13; follow her rhythm. I think of Vienna,<br />&#13; 1824, in the Theatre am Karntnertor,<br />&#13; when Beethoven himself stood on stage<br />&#13; at the end of his career to direct the premiere,<br />&#13; his first time on stage in twelve years.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Though he could not hear the symphony, he furiously<br />&#13; waved his arms in tempo, moving his body<br />&#13; as if to play all the instruments at once,<br />&#13; as if he could be every voice in the chorus. </p>&#13; &#13; <p>And when it was done, the great composer<br />&#13; went on, still conducting, not knowing<br />&#13; it was over until the contralto soloist moved to him<br />&#13; and turned him to face the ovation.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>With the greatest respect, and knowing<br />&#13; that applause could not reach him,<br />&#13; the audience members raised their hands and hats<br />&#13; and threw white handkerchiefs into the air,<br />&#13; then rose five times to their feet.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>When the sixth grade band director<br />&#13; lowers her arms, the young musicians stop with her.<br />&#13; They rise and bow, and the audience claps<br />&#13; and some of the parents whoop.<br />&#13; And the students bow again, and again,<br />&#13; though the clapping is done.<br />&#13; They do not yet know how to carry pride<br />&#13; in their awkward bodies, and they stumble<br />&#13; and list off the stage.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>The flute player’s black pants are too short<br />&#13; for his long thin legs. He is growing in ways<br />&#13; neither he nor his mother can understand.<br />&#13; There she is, weeping in the back row,<br />&#13; in her ears, in her heart, a song<br />&#13; no one else can hear.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>“Joyful, Joyful” first appeared in <em>Naked for Tea</em> (Able Muse Press, 2018)</p>&#13; &#13; <p>All poems are Copyright 2018 by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer</p>&#13; </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-keyword--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--field-keyword.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--field-keyword.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-keyword 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Jan 2019 16:44:23 +0000 yongli 3036 at http://coloradoencyclopedia.org Jared Smith http://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/jared-smith <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--title--encyclopedia-article.html.twig x field--node--title.html.twig * field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--title.html.twig * field--string.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">Jared Smith</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--uid--encyclopedia-article.html.twig x field--node--uid.html.twig * field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--uid.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--uid.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'username' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/user/username.html.twig' --> <span lang="" about="/users/yongli" typeof="schema:Person" property="schema:name" datatype="">yongli</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/user/username.html.twig' --> </span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--uid.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--created--encyclopedia-article.html.twig x field--node--created.html.twig * field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--created.html.twig * field--created.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--created.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'time' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/time.html.twig' --> <time datetime="2019-01-27T17:03:53-07:00" title="Sunday, January 27, 2019 - 17:03" class="datetime">Sun, 01/27/2019 - 17:03</time> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/time.html.twig' --> </span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--created.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'addtoany_standard' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * addtoany-standard--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * addtoany-standard--node.html.twig x addtoany-standard.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/addtoany/templates/addtoany-standard.html.twig' --> <span class="a2a_kit a2a_kit_size_32 addtoany_list" data-a2a-url="http://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/jared-smith" data-a2a-title="Jared Smith"><a class="a2a_dd addtoany_share" href="https://www.addtoany.com/share#url=http%3A%2F%2Fcoloradoencyclopedia.org%2Farticle%2Fjared-smith&amp;title=Jared%20Smith"></a><a class="a2a_button_facebook"></a><a class="a2a_button_twitter"></a><a class="a2a_button_email"></a></span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/addtoany/templates/addtoany-standard.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--body--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--body.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--body.html.twig * field--text-with-summary.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item" id="id-body"><p class="rtecenter"><img alt="Poet: Jared Smith" src="/sites/default/files/Jared_Smith.jpg" style="width: 500px; height: 653px;" /></p>&#13; &#13; <p>Jared Smith is the author of thirteen volumes of poetry. His work has appeared in hundreds of journals and anthologies here and abroad. He is Poetry Editor of <em>Turtle Island Quarterly</em> (e-zine,) and has worked on the editorial staff of <em>The New York Quarterly, Home Planet News</em>, and <em>The Pedestal Magazine</em>, as well as serving on the Boards of literary and arts non-profits in New York, Illinois, and Colorado. He is a former Special Appointee at Argonne National Lab, and past advisor to several White House Commissions under President William Clinton. He lives in Lafayette, Colorado.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Poems</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>He Does What It Takes<br />&#13; Curling his fingers around porcelain<br />&#13; he cradles the morning cup of coffee and watches<br />&#13; steam rise between his fingers, how each finger<br />&#13; shapes the fog of morning with his unique mark,<br />&#13; his DNA and his fingerprints upon the swirl of time,<br />&#13; and he listens to the tick of the clock upon his wall,<br />&#13; the first birds beginning to sing in his garden,<br />&#13; and a dog startled by dawn down the street,<br />&#13; the morning paper hitting with a thud at his door.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>This is what the man is before he goes out<br />&#13; to turn the ignition in his family car.  It is what<br />&#13; his wife thought of before she thought of diamonds<br />&#13; and before there were other souls beneath this roof.<br />&#13; It is the little things that make the man what he is,<br />&#13; the scent of his chemical balances, the colors he sees<br />&#13; as sun rises over the blasted buildings of his city,<br />&#13; the tiniest bits of the universe that have come to him<br />&#13; and pulled together to be unique in all of time.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>This is what he is, and he goes out each morning<br />&#13; to do what the machine asks and comes back each night.<br />&#13; At night the crickets are calling to the darkness and light<br />&#13; within him, and the hum of commerce fills his veins.<br />&#13; He whispers of love with each breath he takes.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>From the book <em>Shadows Within the Roaring Fork</em> (OR: Flowstone Press, 2017)</p>&#13; &#13; <h3>What We Don’t Talk Of</h3>&#13; &#13; <p>Our language is one forged from<br />&#13; fists slammed down on desks,<br />&#13; from Teutonic storage bins forged<br />&#13; from fire for cold steel weaponry.<br />&#13; It is a scaffolding for science<br />&#13; measured and contained too small;<br />&#13; a brittle thing matching the metal<br />&#13; that places fences in our pockets.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Our language does not understand<br />&#13; nor have words for sunrise coating<br />&#13; and enmeshing autumn grains<br />&#13; growing where water meets the land.<br />&#13; It does not understand the lightness<br />&#13; filling the dark between trees at night.<br />&#13; The wind moves between its words<br />&#13; as though they were but dried shells.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Our language but mimics the eyes<br />&#13; of fox stealing the eggs from chicks<br />&#13; or taking meat home for the pups.<br />&#13; Our syllables get caught in its fur<br />&#13; and brushed out by brambles<br />&#13; scattered to fleshless tangles of rage.<br />&#13; Our language is one of frustration,<br />&#13; unable and unwilling to be flexible,<br />&#13; unwilling to listen to the words<br />&#13; of welcome that come from your lips,<br />&#13; unwilling to forgive what it does not know.</p>&#13; &#13; <p><a name="_Hlk504893066" id="_Hlk504893066">From <em>To The Dark Angels</em> (New York Quarterly Books, 2015)</a></p>&#13; &#13; <h3>Shadows Within The Roaring Fork</h3>&#13; &#13; <p>The river looks the same as it did<br />&#13; an hour ago, this river that is not a big river<br />&#13; but one you could jump halfway over<br />&#13; one <strong>sage brush</strong> bank to the other almost,<br />&#13; nothing like the Big Muddy or even The Hudson,<br />&#13; not <strong><a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/colorado-river">The Colorado</a></strong> even but still<br />&#13; with the sun hitting down upon its rapids<br />&#13; and spring flush rolling boulders downstream,<br />&#13; with the few shade trees above it in wind<br />&#13; it looks the same river it was yesterday,<br />&#13; a singular presence, an eel chasing its tail<br />&#13; under salt-slicked roadways and arches.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>But this is the time of year when most<br />&#13; it changes and the insects hatched upon its surface<br />&#13; are swirled down and kegs of stone roll along<br />&#13; its bed and the minerals giving it its colors<br />&#13; seep into its passage, the fox that dipped its paws,<br />&#13; the <strong>bear</strong> way upstream that dragged across it<br />&#13; washing the heavy musk of winter in its spume,<br />&#13; have all been taken in its solvent, been drunken deeply<br />&#13; and washed away tasting as nothing but water<br />&#13; in this clearest of mountain rivers erasing it seems<br />&#13; everything and taking it all away within it,<br />&#13; ever changing and taking everything down,<br />&#13; each hoof print, each piece of whitened skull,<br />&#13; each reflection of the moon and the stars,<br />&#13; though it looks the same as it always did.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>From far above one day into the next the same,<br />&#13; from up close pressed against your lips, drawn in<br />&#13; from one day into the next it tastes the same purity<br />&#13; of snow that inhabits the highest mountains<br />&#13; having taken all the dust and debris to itself,<br />&#13; roaring that old adage that nothing lasts forever<br />&#13; and even the continents will be washed away.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>And perhaps it’s so, perhaps the weight<br />&#13; of so many years and souls and dreams<br />&#13; will wash down with the rusted nails<br />&#13; and the broken concrete shells of men,<br />&#13; but entering into that river there are shapes,<br />&#13; are shadows lurking, holding their own<br />&#13; finning the graveling beds, watching,<br />&#13; taking all that debris inside and breathing,<br />&#13; moving independent of the current,|<br />&#13; causing change and setting red suns to burn<br />&#13; in places men have not yet gone nor seen.<br />&#13; And these elusive shadows, they change the river as well<br />&#13; filling its waters with the scent and sense of life.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>From <em>Shadows Within The Roaring Fork</em> (OR: Flowstone Press, 2017<strong>)</strong></p>&#13; &#13; <h3>Soaring on the Tectonic Waves of Time</h3>&#13; &#13; <p>A hawk folds itself into the updrafts atop <strong>Green Mountain</strong>,<br />&#13; its eyes now a part of the wind and the rock from which it came,<br />&#13; and in that instant it becomes itself the wind with a mind in time…<br />&#13; slow moving as it settles its way in circles down toward the earth again.<br />&#13; The light in its eye reflects the sage dry hills, the huckleberries’ red blood,<br />&#13; the glass of family homes outside <strong><a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/boulder">Boulder</a></strong>, the sun coming back.  It is<br />&#13; a gliding between facets of time traveled across multiple universes,<br />&#13; These mountains are the slow-moving tectonic waves of time<br />&#13; tumbling over each other, wind whipping off the froth, sand shifting<br />&#13; and pulling away at the roots of whatever grows, but at a speed we<br />&#13; live almost outside of except for instants like these when we sit<br />&#13; on our porch watching out over the western ranges peak beyond peak<br />&#13; and shadows flow across evening canyons, shifting shapes so I rise<br />&#13; from the land, seeing from outside my body the rocks and trees grow small,<br />&#13; hovering with my shoulders against them turning back the tide not at all<br />&#13; but feeling the physics that set us all in motion in distant galaxies so long ago.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>We start then with muses, as Hesiod wrote, telling of things that are,<br />&#13; that will be and that were with voices joined in harmony, and we partake<br />&#13; of shadow and of <em>eidos</em> in ways that are outside the neurons of our minds.<br />&#13; A mountain is a fabric and a wrinkle in the text of time, and is but one muse,<br />&#13; the city at its feet is another, in a concurrent folding of the fabric.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>From <em>Grassroots</em> (Wind Publications, 2010)</p>&#13; &#13; <h3>It Happens Right Here in Loveland, Colorado<br />&#13; at the G&amp;W Sugar Beet Field Processing Plant </h3>&#13; &#13; <p>There is something sweet and hard in all men<br />&#13; and it is drawn out in our industry from the hard, dry ground,<br />&#13; It is drawn out and distilled from our sorrows and our struggles<br />&#13; from working together with our minds and our backs and our hands.<br />&#13; It is something at the center of our being, of our reality.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>I think of it this time of year, walking knee-deep in the harvest fields<br />&#13; as the days grow shorter and the temperature begins to fall.  We gather,<br />&#13; we neighbors who oversee the farmland, and the migrants, and the scientists too,<br />&#13; and the engineers who build factories and railroads and boxcars filled with night—<br />&#13; all looking for something sweet and meaningful at the center of our being.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>We work together as we move through life,<br />&#13; and some of us walk out into the field as I do, and swing knives and tools<br />&#13; to shred the dark earth tubers that lie beneath us having drawn life<br />&#13; from the sand and water that lie along the banks of the <strong>Big Thompson</strong>,<br />&#13; within <strong>Loveland</strong>, we walk the fields rooting out rock hard fruits of labor<br />&#13; row upon row of men and women walking the fields in autumn<br />&#13; ripping these <strong><a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/sugar-beet-industry">beets</a></strong> from the earth, collecting them in piles by the roads,<br />&#13; gathering them for processing and refinement, beating down these rock- hard<br />&#13;    stones that no man might have thought to eat<br />&#13; but are the transition zone between desert and mountain, arid and water,<br />&#13; where we learn to turn our sorrow into the sweet crystals of man’s soul.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>We do this every year.  We pull the tubers from the soil.<br />&#13; We haul them off the field.  We cut off the leaves that bring them sun,<br />&#13; and we shake the earth from them.  We haul these gray slabs across the furrows<br />&#13; of the earth and pile them up for cars built in Detroit and trains built in Pennsylvania,<br />&#13; and we all work together having come from Russia and England and New York<br />&#13; and having worked the fields in Mexico and foundries in Chicago,<br />&#13; we come together in this rush of autumn humanity searching for something<br />&#13; that will enrich and sweeten the heart of our days in Loveland, Colorado.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>We haul these gray tubers away into the dark bins of our days, but we<br />&#13; work with them, we refine them, we cut deeply into what they grew from,<br />&#13; we lay them out, grate them down, distill their juices.  We do this together:<br />&#13; laborers, scientists, financial wizards who build steel and concrete monuments,<br />&#13; sweating together to find something clear and sweet within the darkest earth.<br />&#13; And here we see it, in this vacuum pan chamber where everything distills<br />&#13;           like poetry<br />&#13; we see that crystal clear nugget that is at the core of every child’s dream,<br />&#13; something sweet to hang the dreams of a lifetime on where something sweet<br />&#13; comes from the hardest work that every kind of man and woman can do<br />&#13; working together in the seeding, planting, growing, and harvesting of seasons.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>From <em>Shadows Within The Roaring Fork</em> (OR: Flowstone Press, 2017)</p>&#13; &#13; <h3>The City Within the City</h3>&#13; &#13; <p>is within the darkest brick alleyways<br />&#13; at the far end, over the cobblestones<br />&#13; behind the greyest most modest wall<br />&#13; where when the doors open chandeliers<br />&#13; (cut glass from the hard hands of Tiffany)<br />&#13; shaken by Brahms and Mozart notes,<br />&#13; where shadowed men speak in whispers|<br />&#13; slurring their words in aged whiskey or<br />&#13; rolling their vowels in brandy snifters<br />&#13; come together in every city nameless.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>It is a place where Roman Cardinals<br />&#13; take off their shoes, turn water into wine<br />&#13; and pass bread among poor fishermen,<br />&#13; a place where Rothschilds sew buttons<br />&#13; onto the very fabric of industrial society,<br />&#13; knowing what seam clothes the factories,<br />&#13; what clothes the university professors,<br />&#13; and where the owners of the deepest mines<br />&#13; crush the land itself into the finest jewels.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>It is a place linked by placelessness,<br />&#13; stretching across one continent to another<br />&#13; identified most by the silence of <em>gravitas</em>,<br />&#13; the number of communication lines run in,<br />&#13; the generations that have grown in-bred<br />&#13; that own the media that no one writes of,<br />&#13; that is the heartbeat that fills our lives.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Found almost always where least expected<br />&#13; it wears the dappled camouflage of soldiers<br />&#13; who have enlisted on the wings of angels,<br />&#13; and its music, its heady perfumes, baubles,<br />&#13; metaphysical incantations, whispered siren songs<br />&#13; are the darkest deepest richest fabric woven<br />&#13; in the city within the city within our home.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>From <em>Shadows Within The Roaring Fork</em> (OR: Flowstone Press, 2017)</p>&#13; &#13; <h3>Deep in the Convenience Store</h3>&#13; &#13; <p>A man buys two pens<br />&#13;     and puts them in his pocket<br />&#13; in the convenience store<br />&#13; the cash register accounts for two pens<br />&#13;    as two wide angle cameras take him in<br />&#13; side the cameras four more pens<br />&#13; click into the man’s pockets<br />&#13; and the bar code reader sends data<br />&#13; while the parking lot camera scans two pens<br />&#13; clipped onto a sweat stained shirt, and<br />&#13; by the time he gets home 18 pens<br />&#13; bulge in his pocket, closing him in<br />&#13; while computers trace two pens back<br />&#13; to an assembly line in eastern Asia<br />&#13; where caps are placed on these things</p>&#13; &#13; <p>The man lies awake all night.  His pens become immense and<br />&#13; do not have enough ink to write poems of the people he has touched.<br />&#13; His pens have meant more to people than all the poems he writes.<br />&#13; He knows his pens are filled with hungry haunted nightmares.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>From <em>Shadows Within The Roaring Fork</em> (OR: Flowstone Press, 2017)</p>&#13; &#13; <h3>That’s How It Is</h3>&#13; &#13; <p>Sunrise finds the New York shopkeepers rolling up their windows<br />&#13; dusting off the counters sweeping the floors shoveling their walkways<br />&#13; pulling pastries from dry hot ovens filling coffee pots to get the morning going<br />&#13; for the secretaries and executives and lawyers bankers insurance salesmen clerks<br />&#13; and the homeless too coming in quietly with their handfuls of fear and empty bellies<br />&#13; because it’s another day, and the workers do what workers do every blessed day<br />&#13; not too aware of what they do or whom they serve but it’s morning and they rise</p>&#13; &#13; <p>and sunrise is indifferent as the clouds and passes on to Pennsylvania<br />&#13; and it reflects redness of the empty steel mills and foundries<br />&#13; where again the shopkeepers rise and here the miners line up for unemployment<br />&#13; or the lucky ones still go down into the darkness of the earth with fear in their hearts<br />&#13; and fishermen line up on the banks of the Alleghany with their thermoses<br />&#13; and a gum chewing girl from a diner clears egg-smeared plates from tables<br />&#13; watching the traffic that never ends go by along the interstate a seamless zipper</p>&#13; &#13; <p>and sunrise hurries on its way out across the freighters on Lake Michigan<br />&#13; and the commodity traders working screaming toward heart attacks in Chicago<br />&#13; the endowed institutions of learning that line our cities the students half asleep<br />&#13; out over the heartland where the grain still grows so high it never touches ground<br />&#13; and on out over eastern and then western Kansas where the aquifers are drying<br />&#13; and the promise of America’s breadbasket is starting to grow thin</p>&#13; &#13; <p>it moves on across the mountains of Colorado, hiding itself in valleys<br />&#13; and pointing out the oil well and ore dumps and abandoned ghost towns<br />&#13; the rusting scaffolding of the <strong>Roan Plateau</strong> the toxic sumps of <strong>Climax</strong><br />&#13; and the shopkeepers rising to open their shops for the clerks and lawyers<br />&#13; ranchers driving their herds to the high country or to the low country<br />&#13;                                   depending on the season<br />&#13; it changes but sunrise moves across it and as always work begins<br />&#13; and sunrise has no mind no consciousness of the shadows growing<br />&#13; and of how the same work has to start and be filled each day or<br />&#13; of the darkness that follows only hours behind and the light<br />&#13; behind that the tired muscles in a man’s arms the panic<br />&#13; at the morning table when the bills come out<br />&#13; the liquor sparkling in taverns after the day is gone<br />&#13; shimmering in the folks of evening gowns but<br />&#13; it moves on without reference to the thoughts of workers<br />&#13; sunrise brightens up the sands of Vegas and the roulette tables<br />&#13; the hookers high-rollers and papers in the gutters along the strip<br />&#13; the hangovers and empty wallets left over from the night before<br />&#13; and the shop owners the police the judges putting on their pants<br />&#13; the hotel windows glinting back a desert sandscape to the sky</p>&#13; &#13; <p>but it moves on and peaks upon the Hollywood sign and the<br />&#13; cougar living in those hills and the movie makers making reality<br />&#13; and flattens out over the iron endless gray of the Pacific<br />&#13; but even as the surf is up off California it is growing darker<br />&#13; to the east and the day is as long as the motions we all go through.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>From <em>To The Dark Angels </em>(New York Quarterly Books, 2015)</p>&#13; &#13; <h3>Love in Quantum Field Theory</h3>&#13; &#13; <p>I am awake with the mountain cats,<br />&#13; perturbations in the shadows of nothingness.<br />&#13; There are four fields in quantum theory,<br />&#13; open flowings without fences,<br />&#13; dimpled with the circles of disruption<br />&#13; splashed from infinite possibilities on themselves,<br />&#13; of those things that go through a cat’s eye<br />&#13; and are the eye of the dark cat beyond night,<br />&#13; night- light within the beginning of all things.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>We circle around upon through each other, bosons,<br />&#13; each dimpled ripple seeking something in the curve<br />&#13; that entwined without mind in the dimpled curve<br />&#13; is sensed most perfectly as being what we need<br />&#13; as things that have no needs beyond ourselves.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>And I don’t know now as dusk settles time space<br />&#13; like a liquid crystal cat display in window glass<br />&#13; what gravity this has that causes the fields<br />&#13; to feed upon themselves, to flow between<br />&#13; the stones that are the field or the flesh.<br />&#13; Perhaps a field out beyond the fences built<br />&#13; will be found to flow between the currents<br />&#13; ebbing forever in the tidal flow.  Perhaps</p>&#13; &#13; <p>there is nothing that can disrupt field theory<br />&#13; dimpling on itself except some other force<br />&#13; where life finds life within each other<br />&#13; creating not another like itself but life<br />&#13; creating what no other force can feel or be,<br />&#13; switching back and forth a lover’s lazy gaze<br />&#13; sinuous as the dreams of anything, falling<br />&#13; through everything with the weight of life<br />&#13; lost in the majesty of mindless certainty.<br />&#13; Appearing.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>From <em>Shadows Within The Roaring Fork</em> (OR: Flowstone Press, 2017)</p>&#13; &#13; <h3>Lake Peterson</h3>&#13; &#13; <p>This is a small lake but deep,<br />&#13; nestled in the throat of a volcano<br />&#13; surrounded by miles of <strong><a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/moose">moose</a></strong> and <strong><a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/rocky-mountain-elk">elk</a></strong><br />&#13; foraging their ways among <strong>aspen</strong> and <strong>fir</strong>,<br />&#13; the chuckling of martens and porcupines,<br />&#13; the silence of Colorado coyotes at dusk.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>A sunset brightening horizon fills this lake<br />&#13; as it fills the sleek bellies of <strong>trout</strong> down<br />&#13;    in their darkness<br />&#13; with eyes that perceive what cannot be<br />&#13;          spoken,<br />&#13; what cannot be shared across flesh.<br />&#13; And the wind which passes among pines<br />&#13; moves across this lake without moving it,<br />&#13; meaning that small waves dance in place<br />&#13; where shore meets land again and again,<br />&#13;  almost as on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean<br />&#13; except there are fewer people here<br />&#13; and there are no billboards, no road.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>This is a small lake that matters little<br />&#13; where an eco-system of life encompasses<br />&#13; little meaning on the edge of infinity,<br />&#13; and the sun is its reflected surface<br />&#13; and its voiceless denizens are dark<br />&#13; with the bright colors of stars on their skin,<br />&#13; and the voice and temperature of the earth<br />&#13; funneled deep into its concave infinite depth.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>From <em>To the Dark Angels</em> (New York Quarterly Books, 2015)</p>&#13; &#13; <p>All poems are opyright 2018 by Jared Smith</p>&#13; </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-keyword--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--field-keyword.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--field-keyword.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-keyword field--type-entity-reference field--label-above" id="id-field-keyword"> <div class="field__label" id="id-field-keyword">Keywords</div> <div class='field__items'> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/social-studies" hreflang="en">Social Studies</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a 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http://coloradoencyclopedia.org Pattiann Rogers http://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/pattiann-rogers <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--title--encyclopedia-article.html.twig x field--node--title.html.twig * field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--title.html.twig * field--string.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">Pattiann Rogers</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--uid--encyclopedia-article.html.twig x field--node--uid.html.twig * field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--uid.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--uid.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'username' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/user/username.html.twig' --> <span lang="" about="/users/yongli" typeof="schema:Person" property="schema:name" datatype="">yongli</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/user/username.html.twig' --> </span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--uid.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--created--encyclopedia-article.html.twig x field--node--created.html.twig * field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--created.html.twig * field--created.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--created.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'time' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/time.html.twig' --> <time datetime="2019-01-27T16:25:32-07:00" title="Sunday, January 27, 2019 - 16:25" class="datetime">Sun, 01/27/2019 - 16:25</time> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/time.html.twig' --> </span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--created.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'addtoany_standard' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * addtoany-standard--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * addtoany-standard--node.html.twig x addtoany-standard.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/addtoany/templates/addtoany-standard.html.twig' --> <span class="a2a_kit a2a_kit_size_32 addtoany_list" data-a2a-url="http://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/pattiann-rogers" data-a2a-title="Pattiann Rogers"><a class="a2a_dd addtoany_share" href="https://www.addtoany.com/share#url=http%3A%2F%2Fcoloradoencyclopedia.org%2Farticle%2Fpattiann-rogers&amp;title=Pattiann%20Rogers"></a><a class="a2a_button_facebook"></a><a class="a2a_button_twitter"></a><a class="a2a_button_email"></a></span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/addtoany/templates/addtoany-standard.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--body--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--body.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--body.html.twig * field--text-with-summary.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item" id="id-body"><p>Pattiann Rogers has published fourteen books of poetry, two prose books, and a book in collaboration with the Colorado artist Joellyn Duesberry. Rogers is the recipient of two NEA Grants, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Lannan Literary Award. Among other awards, her poems have received five Pushcart Prizes, two appearances in <em>Best American Poetry, </em>and five appearances in <em>Best Spiritual Writing</em>.  She has taught as a visiting writer at many universities and was Associate Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Arkansas from 1993–97.  She is the mother of two sons, has three grandsons, and lives with her husband, a retired geophysicist, in Castle Pines.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Poems</h2>&#13; &#13; <h3>The Rites of Passage</h3>&#13; &#13; <p>The inner cell of each frog egg laid today<br />&#13; In these still open waters is surrounded<br />&#13; By melanin pigment, by a jelly capsule<br />&#13; Acting as cushion to the falling of the surf,<br />&#13; As buffer to the loud crow-calling<br />&#13; Coming from the cleared forests to the north.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>At 77 degrees the single cell cleaves in 90 minutes,<br />&#13; Then cleaves again and in five hours forms the hollow<br />&#13; Ball of the blastula.  In the dark, 18 hours later,<br />&#13; Even as a shuffle in the grass moves the shadows<br />&#13; On the shore and the stripes of the moon on the sand<br />&#13; Disappear and the sounds of the heron jerk<br />&#13; Across the lake, the growing blastula turns itself<br />&#13; Inside out unassisted and becomes a gut.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>What is the source of the tension instigating next<br />&#13; The rudimentary tail and gills, the cobweb of veins?<br />&#13; What is the impetus slowly directing the hard-core<br />&#13; Current right up the scale to that one definite moment<br />&#13; When a fold of cells quivers suddenly for the first time<br />&#13; And someone says loudly "heart," born, beating steadily,<br />&#13; Bearing now in the white water of the moon<br />&#13; The instantaneous distinction of being liable to death?</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Above me, the full moon, round and floating deep<br />&#13; In its capsule of sky, never trembles.<br />&#13; In ten thousand years it will never involute<br />&#13; Its white frozen blastula to form a gut,<br />&#13; Will never by a heart be called born.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Think of that part of me wishing tonight to remember<br />&#13; The split-second edge before the beginning,<br />&#13; To remember by a sudden white involution of sight,<br />&#13; By a vision of tension folding itself<br />&#13; Inside clear open waters, by imitating a manipulation<br />&#13; Of cells in a moment of distinction, wishing to remember<br />&#13; The entire language made during that crossing.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Copyright 1981 by Princeton University, 2005 by Milkweed Editions, and 2018 .</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Published in <em>The Expectations of Light</em> and <em>Firekeeper: New and Selected Poems, Revised Edition </em>(Minneapolis, MN: Milkweed Editions, 2005)<em>.</em></p>&#13; &#13; <h3>Achieving Perspective</h3>&#13; &#13; <p>Straight up away from this road,<br />&#13; Away from the fitted particles of frost<br />&#13; Coating the hull of each chick pea,<br />&#13; And the stiff archer bug making its way<br />&#13; In the morning dark, toe hair by toe hair,<br />&#13; Up the stem of the trillium,<br />&#13; Straight up through the sky above this road right now,<br />&#13; The galaxies of the Cygnus A cluster<br />&#13; Are colliding with each other in a massive swarm<br />&#13; Of interpenetrating and exploding catastrophes.<br />&#13; I try to remember that.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>And even in the gold and purple pretense<br />&#13; Of evening, I make myself remember<br />&#13; That it would take 40,000 years full of gathering<br />&#13; Into leaf and dropping, full of pulp splitting<br />&#13; And the hard wrinkling of seed, of the rising up<br />&#13; Of wood fibers and the disintegration of forests,<br />&#13; Of this lake disappearing completely in the bodies<br />&#13; Of toad slush and duckweed rock,<br />&#13; 40,000 years and the fastest thing we own,<br />&#13; To reach the one star nearest to us.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>And when you speak to me like this,<br />&#13; I try to remember that the wood and cement walls<br />&#13; Of this room are being swept away now,<br />&#13; Molecule by molecule, in a slow and steady wind,<br />&#13; And nothing at all separates our bodies<br />&#13; From the vast emptiness expanding, and I know<br />&#13; We are sitting in our chairs<br />&#13; Discoursing in the middle of the blackness of space.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>And when you look at me<br />&#13; I try to recall that at this moment<br />&#13; Somewhere millions of miles beyond the dimness<br />&#13; Of the sun, the comet Biela, speeding<br />&#13; In its rocks and ices, is just beginning to enter<br />&#13; The widest arc of its elliptical turn.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Copyright 1981 by Princeton University, 2005 by Milkweed Editions, and 2018 .</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Published in <em>The Expectations of Light</em> and <em>Firekeeper: New and Selected Poems, Revised Edition </em>(Minneapolis, MN: Milkweed Editions, 2005).</p>&#13; &#13; <h3>The Significance of Location</h3>&#13; &#13; <p>The cat has the chance to make the sunlight<br />&#13; Beautiful, to stop it and turn it immediately<br />&#13; Into black fur and motion, to take it<br />&#13; As shifting branch and brown feather<br />&#13; Into the back of the brain forever.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>The cardinal has flown the sun in red<br />&#13; Through the oak forest to the lawn.<br />&#13; The finch has caught it in yellow<br />&#13; And taken it among the thorns.  By the spider<br />&#13; It has been bound tightly and tied<br />&#13; In an eight-stringed knot.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>The sun has been intercepted in its one<br />&#13; Basic state and changed to a million varieties<br />&#13; Of green stick and tassle.  It has been broken<br />&#13; Into pieces by glass rings, by mist<br />&#13; Over the river.  Its heat<br />&#13; Has been given the board fence for body,<br />&#13; The desert rock for fact.  On winter hills<br />&#13; It has been laid down in white like a martyr.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>This afternoon we could spread gold scarves<br />&#13; Clear across the field and say in truth,<br />&#13; "Sun you are silk."</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Imagine the sun totally isolated,<br />&#13; Its brightness shot in continuous streaks straight out<br />&#13; Into the black, never arrested,<br />&#13; Never once being made light.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Someone should take note<br />&#13; Of how the earth has saved the sun from oblivion.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Copyright 1981 by Princeton University, 2005 by Milkweed Editions, and 2018 .</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Published in <em>The Expectations of Light,</em> and <em>Firekeeper, New and Selected Poems, Revised Edition </em>(Minneapolis, MN: Milkweed Editions, 2005)<em>.</em></p>&#13; &#13; <h3>Geocentric</h3>&#13; &#13; <p>Indecent, self-soiled, bilious<br />&#13; reek of turnip and toadstool<br />&#13; decay, dribbling the black oil<br />&#13; of wilted succulents, the brown<br />&#13; fester of rotting orchids,<br />&#13; in plain view, that stain<br />&#13; of stinkhorn down your front,<br />&#13; that leaking roil of bracket<br />&#13; fungi down your back, you<br />&#13; purple-haired, grainy-fuzzed<br />&#13; smolder of refuse, fathering<br />&#13; fumes and boils and powdery<br />&#13; mildews, enduring the constant<br />&#13; interruption of sink-mire<br />&#13; flatulence, contagious<br />&#13; with ear wax, corn smut,<br />&#13; blister rust, backwash<br />&#13; and graveyard debris, rich<br />&#13; with manure bog and dry-rot<br />&#13; harboring not only egg-addled<br />&#13; garbage and wrinkled lip<br />&#13; of orange-peel mold but also<br />&#13; the clotted breath of overripe<br />&#13; radish and burnt leek, bearing<br />&#13; every dank, malodorous rut<br />&#13; and scarp, all sulphur fissures<br />&#13; and fetid hillside seepages, old,<br />&#13; old, dependable, engendering<br />&#13; forever the stench and stretch<br />&#13; and warm seeth of inevitable<br />&#13; putrefaction, nobody<br />&#13; loves you as I do.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Copyright 1981 by Princeton University, 2005 by Milkweed Editions, and 2018 .</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Published in <em>Geocentric</em> and <em>Firekeeper: New and Selected Poems, Revised Edition </em>(Minneapolis, MN: Milkweed Editions, 2005)<em>.</em></p>&#13; &#13; <h3>A Passing</h3>&#13; &#13; <p>Coyotes passed through the field at the back<br />&#13; of the house last night--coyotes, from midnight<br />&#13; till dawn, hunting, foraging, a mad scavenging,<br />&#13; scaring up pocket gophers, white-breasted mice,<br />&#13; jacktails, voles, the least shrew, catching<br />&#13; a bite at a time.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>They were a band, screeching yodeling,<br />&#13; a multi-toned pack.  Such yipping and yapping<br />&#13; and jaw clapping, yelping and painful howling,<br />&#13; they had to be skinny, worn, used-up,<br />&#13; a tribe of bedraggled uncles and cousins<br />&#13; on the skids, torn, patched, frenzied<br />&#13; mothers, daughters, furtive pups<br />&#13; and, slinking on the edges, an outcast<br />&#13; coydog or two.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>From the way they sounded they must have smelled<br />&#13; like rotted toadstool mash and cow blood<br />&#13; curdled together.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>All through the night they ranged and howled,<br />&#13; haranguing, scattering through the bindweed and wild<br />&#13; madder, drawing together again, following<br />&#13; old trails over hillocks, leaving their scat<br />&#13; at the junctions, lifting their legs on split<br />&#13; rocks and witch grass.  Through rough-stemmed<br />&#13; and panicled flowers, they nipped<br />&#13; and nosed, their ragged tails dragging<br />&#13; in the camphorweed and nettle dust.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>They passed through, all of them, like threads<br />&#13; across a frame, piercing and pulling, twining<br />&#13; and woofing, the warp and the weft.  Off-key,<br />&#13; suffering, a racket of abominables​<br />&#13; with few prospects, they made it--entering<br />&#13; on one side, departing on the other.<br />&#13; They passed clear through and they vanished<br />&#13; with the morning, alive.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Copyright 1981 by Princeton University, 2005 by Milkweed Editions, and 2018 .</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Published in <em>Geocentric </em>and <em>Firekeeper: New and Selected Poems, Revised Edition </em>(Minneapolis, MN: Milkweed Editions, 2005)<em>.</em></p>&#13; &#13; <h3>In Addition to Faith, Hope and Charity</h3>&#13; &#13; <p>I'm sure there's a god<br />&#13; in favor of drums.  Consider<br />&#13; their pervasiveness--the thump,<br />&#13; thump and slide of waves<br />&#13; on a stretched hide of beach,<br />&#13; the rising beat and slap<br />&#13; of their crests against shore<br />&#13; baffles, the rapping of otters<br />&#13; cracking molluscs with stones,<br />&#13; woodpeckers beak-banging, the beaver's<br />&#13; whack of his tail-paddle, the ape<br />&#13; playing the bam of his own chest,<br />&#13; the million tickering rolls<br />&#13; of rain off the flat-leaves<br />&#13; and razor-rims of the forest.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>And we know the noise<br />&#13; of our own inventions--snare and kettle,<br />&#13; bongo, conga, big bass, toy tin,<br />&#13; timbales, tambourine, tom-tom.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>But the heart must be the most<br />&#13; pervasive drum of all.  Imagine<br />&#13; hearing all together every tinny<br />&#13; snare of every heartbeat<br />&#13; in every jumping mouse and harvest<br />&#13; mouse, sagebrush vole and least<br />&#13; shrew living across the paririe;<br />&#13; and add to that cacophony the individual<br />&#13; staccato tickings inside all gnatcatchers,<br />&#13; kingbirds, kestrels, rock doves, pine<br />&#13; warblers crossing, criss-crossing​<br />&#13; each other in the sky, the sound<br />&#13; of their beatings overlapping<br />&#13; with the singular hammerings<br />&#13; of the hearts of cougar, coyote,<br />&#13; weasel, badger, pronghorn, the ponderous<br />&#13; bass of the black bear; and on deserts too,<br />&#13; all the knackings, the flutterings​<br />&#13; inside wart snakes, whiptails, racers<br />&#13; and sidewinders, earless lizards, cactus<br />&#13; owls; plus the clamors undersea, slow<br />&#13; booming in the breasts of beluga<br />&#13; and bowhead, uniform rappings​<br />&#13; in a passing school of cod or bib,<br />&#13; the thidderings of bat rays and needlefish.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Imagine the earth carrying this continuous<br />&#13; din, this multifarious festival of pulsing<br />&#13; thuds, stutters and drummings, wheeling<br />&#13; on and on across the universe.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>This must be proof of a power existing<br />&#13; somewhere definitely in favor<br />&#13; of such a racket.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Copyright 1981 by Princeton University, 2005 by Milkweed Editions, and 2018 .</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Published in <em>Geocentric</em> and <em>Firekeeper: New and Selected Poems, Revised Edition </em>(Minneapolis, MN: Milkweed Editions, 2005)<em>.</em></p>&#13; &#13; <h3>The Family Is All There Is</h3>&#13; &#13; <p>Think of those old, enduring connections<br />&#13; found in all flesh--the channeling<br />&#13; wires and threads, vacuoles, granules,<br />&#13; plasma and pods, purple veins, ascending<br />&#13; boles and coral sapwood (sugar-<br />&#13; and light-filled), those common ligaments,<br />&#13; filaments, fibers and canals.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Seminal to all kin also is the open<br />&#13; mouth--in heart urchin and octopus belly,<br />&#13; in catfish, moonfish, forest lily,<br />&#13; and rugosa rose, in thirsty magpie,<br />&#13; wailing cat cub, barker, yodeler,<br />&#13; yawning coati.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>And there is a pervasive clasping<br />&#13; common to the clan--the hard nails<br />&#13; of lichen and ivy sucker<br />&#13; on the church wall, the bean tendril<br />&#13; and the taproot, the bolted coupling<br />&#13; of crane flies, the hold of the shearwater<br />&#13; on its morning squid, guanine<br />&#13; to cytosine, adenine to thymine,<br />&#13; fingers around fingers, the grip<br />&#13; of the voice on presence, the grasp<br />&#13; of the self on place.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Remember the same hair on pygmy<br />&#13; dormouse and yellow-necked caterpillar,<br />&#13; covering red baboon, thistle seed<br />&#13; and willow herb?  Remember the similar<br />&#13; snorts of warthog, walrus, male <strong><a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/moose">moose</a></strong><br />&#13; and sumo wrestler?  Remember the familiar<br />&#13; whinny and shimmer found in river birches,<br />&#13; bay mares and bullfrog tadpoles,<br />&#13; in children playing at shoulder tag<br />&#13; on a summer lawn?</p>&#13; &#13; <p>The family--weavers, reachers, winders<br />&#13; and connivers, pumpers, runners, air<br />&#13; and bubble riders, rock-sitters, wave-gliders,<br />&#13; wire-wobblers, soothers, flagellators--all<br />&#13; brothers, sisters, all there is.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Name something else.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Copyright 1981 by Princeton University, 2005 by Milkweed Editions, and 2018 .</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Published in <em>Splitting and Binding </em>(Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1989)<em>,</em> and <em>Firekeeper: New and Selected Poems, Revised Edition </em>(Minneapolis, MN: Milkweed Editions, 2005)<em>.</em></p>&#13; &#13; <h3>Knot</h3>&#13; &#13; <p>Watching the close forest this afternoon<br />&#13; and the riverland beyond, I delineate<br />&#13; quail down from the dandelion's shiver<br />&#13; from the blowzy silver of the cobweb<br />&#13; in which both are tangled.  I am skillful<br />&#13; at tracing the white egret within the white<br />&#13; branches of the dead willow where it roosts<br />&#13; and at separating the heron's graceful neck<br />&#13; from the leaning stems of the blue-green<br />&#13; lilies surrounding.  I know how to unravel<br />&#13; sawgrasses knitted to iris leaves knitted<br />&#13; to sweet vernals.  I can unwind sunlight<br />&#13; from the switches of the water in the slough<br />&#13; and divide the grey sumac's hazy hedge<br />&#13; from the hazy grey of the sky, the red vein<br />&#13; of the hibiscus from its red blossom.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>All afternoon I part, I isolate, I untie,<br />&#13; I undo, while all the while the oak<br />&#13; shadows, easing forward, slowly ensnare me,<br />&#13; and the calls of the wood peewees catch<br />&#13; and latch in my gestures, and the spicebush<br />&#13; swallowtails weave their attachments<br />&#13; into my attitude, and the damp sedge<br />&#13; fragrances hook and secure, and the swaying<br />&#13; Spanish mosses loop my coming sleep,<br />&#13; and I am marsh-shackled, forest-twined,<br />&#13; even as the new stars, showing now<br />&#13; through the night-spaces of the sweet gum<br />&#13; and beech, squeeze into the dark<br />&#13; bone of my breast, take their perfectly<br />&#13; secured stitches up and down, pull<br />&#13; all of their thousand threads tight<br />&#13; and fasten, fasten.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Copyright 1981 by Princeton University, 2005 by Milkweed Editions, and 2018 .</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Published in <em>Splitting and Binding,</em> and <em>Firekeeper: New and Selected Poems, Revised Edition.</em></p>&#13; &#13; <h3>Less Than a Whisper Poem</h3>&#13; &#13; <p>    no sound above a nod,<br />&#13; nothing louder than one wilted<br />&#13; thread of sunflower gold dropping<br />&#13; to a lower leaf</p>&#13; &#13; <p>    nothing more jarringa<br />&#13; than the transparent slide of a raindrop<br />&#13; slicking down the furrow of a mossy<br />&#13; trunk</p>&#13; &#13; <p>            slightly less audible than the dip<br />&#13; and rock of a kite string lost and snagged<br />&#13; on a limb of oak</p>&#13; &#13; <p>                                      no message<br />&#13; more profound than December edging<br />&#13; stiffly through the ice-blue branches<br />&#13; of the solstice</p>&#13; &#13; <p>              nothing more riotous<br />&#13; than a cold lump of toad watching<br />&#13; like a stone for a wing of diaphanous<br />&#13; light to pass,</p>&#13; &#13; <p>                        as still as a possum’s feint</p>&#13; &#13; <p>                      no message more profane than<br />&#13;             three straws of frost-covered grass leaning<br />&#13; together on an empty dune</p>&#13; &#13; <p>                                                          a quiet more<br />&#13; silent than a locked sacristy at midnight,<br />&#13; more vacant than the void of a secret<br />&#13; rune lost at sea</p>&#13; &#13; <p>                            no sound, not even<br />&#13; a sigh the width of one scale of a white<br />&#13; moth’s wing, not even a hush the length<br />&#13; of a candle’s blink</p>&#13; &#13; <p>                                nothing,<br />&#13; even less than an imagined finger held<br />&#13; to imagined lips</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Copyright 2013 by Penguin Group and 2018</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Published in <em>Holy Heathen Rhapsody </em>(London: Penguin Books, 2013).</p>&#13; &#13; <h3>The Word (Sun After Rain)</h3>&#13; &#13; <p>A rustling shower passes, and now fiery suns<br />&#13; as small as seeds hang suspended on the point-<br />&#13; tips of every spear of forest pine. <br />&#13;                                                      <em>  Galaxies</em>,<br />&#13; I say, and a wraith appears, an actual apparition<br />&#13; of bestowing beside me in the glittering forest. <br />&#13; I know it.<br />&#13;                   Prayer in the shape of the wind rises. <br />&#13; Galaxies fly, a rain of galaxies in motion, a ringing<br />&#13; crescendo of light.                             <br />&#13;                                 Who is it who makes music<br />&#13; with falling stars of water?  Who is it who tunes<br />&#13; the art of benevolence?<br />&#13;                                         Is it burning water<br />&#13; that creates rainlight in falling pellets of sun? <br />&#13; Is it sunlight that creates the voice of galactic<br />&#13; rains?<br />&#13;             All of those deaf suns are singing in chorus<br />&#13; together: <em>This is so.</em></p>&#13; &#13; <p>Copyright 2017 by Penguin/Random House and Pattiann Rogers</p>&#13; &#13; <p>First published in <em>Quickening Fields </em>(London: Penguin Books, 2017)<em>.</em></p>&#13; </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-keyword--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--field-keyword.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--field-keyword.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 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* links--node.html.twig * links.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/navigation/links--inline.html.twig' --> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/navigation/links--inline.html.twig' --> Sun, 27 Jan 2019 23:25:32 +0000 yongli 3034 at http://coloradoencyclopedia.org Wendy Videlock http://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/wendy-videlock <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--title--encyclopedia-article.html.twig x field--node--title.html.twig * field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--title.html.twig * field--string.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">Wendy Videlock </span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--uid--encyclopedia-article.html.twig x field--node--uid.html.twig * field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--uid.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--uid.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'username' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/user/username.html.twig' --> <span lang="" about="/users/yongli" typeof="schema:Person" property="schema:name" datatype="">yongli</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/user/username.html.twig' --> </span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--uid.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME 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field--text-with-summary.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item" id="id-body"><div>&#13; <p class="rtecenter"><img alt="Poet: Wendy Videlock" src="/sites/default/files/Wendy_Videlock.jpg" style="width: 392px; height: 481px;" /></p>&#13; &#13; <p>Wendy Videlock is a writer, visual artist, teacher, and a life-long student of the world. She lives on the <strong><a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/western-slope">Western Slope</a></strong> of Colorado in <strong>Palisade</strong>. Her books include <em>Nevertheless </em>(San Jose, CA: Able Muse Press, 2011)<em>, Slingshots &amp; Love Plums </em>(San Jose, CA: Able Muse Press, 2015)<em>, The Dark Gnu </em>(San Jose, CA: Able Muse Press, 2013), and a chapbook, <em>What</em><em>’</em><em>s That Supposed to Mean</em> (New York, NY: EXOT Books, 2010).</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Poems</h2>&#13; &#13; <div>&#13; <h3>The Chameleon’s Eye</h3>&#13; &#13; <p>The course of evolution is the story of the soul.<br />&#13;  — CM</p>&#13; &#13; <p>We begin with the chameleon’s eye<br />&#13; or perhaps with a war, and a little girl,<br />&#13; or a single cell, or a single thought,<br />&#13; floating about in a murky and<br />&#13; primordial world.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Let us begin again:<br />&#13; a murky and primordial world<br />&#13; is nonetheless wrought with stars,<br />&#13; turns the old chameleon’s eye,<br />&#13; emboldens the soul,<br />&#13; floating about in a murky and<br />&#13; primordial world.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Trapped like a fish, the soul insists:<br />&#13; thrashing about, floating in,<br />&#13; or clear as a clam in a freshwater pool,<br />&#13; it hardly matters why<br />&#13; or when.  Let us begin again.</p>&#13; </div>&#13; &#13; <div>&#13; <h3>I Have been Counting My Regrets:</h3>&#13; &#13; <p>Bacon, Facebook, cigarettes.  <br />&#13; Anger.  <br />&#13; Bluster. <br />&#13; Laziness.  </p>&#13; &#13; <p>Fearfulness. Indifference.    <br />&#13; Lousy lovers, stupid bets.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Things that should not be confessed. <br />&#13; I’m still not dead.  </p>&#13; &#13; <p>It should be said</p>&#13; &#13; <p>I haven’t finished counting yet.  </p>&#13; &#13; <p>First published in <em>Rattle</em></p>&#13; </div>&#13; &#13; <div>&#13; <h3>Cicada Methuselah Clan</h3>&#13; &#13; <p>Underground<br />&#13; they carry on,<br />&#13; but there is sound,</p>&#13; &#13; <p>there’s even song<br />&#13; that carries on<br />&#13; underground.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>It is the sound<br />&#13; of weightedness,<br />&#13; of being bound,</p>&#13; &#13; <p>of bending roots<br />&#13; and being ground<br />&#13; in dark perceptions</p>&#13; &#13; <p>to the sound<br />&#13; of small mouths sipping<br />&#13; underground.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>First published in <em>The Lyric</em></p>&#13; &#13; <h3>Ode to the Slow</h3>&#13; &#13; <p>I’ve an affinity for ghosts, and so,<br />&#13; dwelling as we ghostly do, with the caw<br />&#13; and the hoo and the pinyon moon, where the freeze</p>&#13; &#13; <p>and the thaw and the witness are<br />&#13; together alive and together entombed,<br />&#13; here on the edge of the high desert world</p>&#13; &#13; <p>where all is stone and all is sky,<br />&#13; where an ancient sea was driven forth<br />&#13; to slowly die, here where the ruins and the peaks</p>&#13; &#13; <p>have changed their names to bluff and butte,<br />&#13; here where the <strong><a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/search/google/ute">Ute</a></strong> had slowed their pace<br />&#13; to warm their bones and slake the thirst,</p>&#13; &#13; <p>here where the reach of the canyon ends<br />&#13; or begins, as it were —like knowledge, it’s always<br />&#13; a rapture or a bit of a blur— (one could soar on the wing</p>&#13; &#13; <p>or tumble in) here where the rolling stone knows<br />&#13; the floor is only made of sand, and the arc<br />&#13; is the mark of the fallen star, </p>&#13; &#13; <p>here where the ghosts and the slopes are wan<br />&#13; and empty of virtue and of sin, I lower a bridge,<br />&#13; and watch the morning fog roll in.  </p>&#13; &#13; <h3>Said the Sculptor</h3>&#13; &#13; <p>Given a freak of vision<br />&#13; and precision</p>&#13; &#13; <p>a person can chip away at a thing<br />&#13; revealing the shape<br />&#13; that lies within:<br />&#13; Pallas Athena, The Thinker,<br />&#13; The Kiss,<br />&#13; The Griffin’s Wing.<br />&#13; Given the inexplicable itch<br />&#13; to chip and chip<br />&#13; away at things, it’s wise to recall<br />&#13; one can also end up<br />&#13; with nothing at all.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>First published in <em>Nevertheless</em> (San Jose, CA: Able Muse Press, 2011).</p>&#13; &#13; <h3>The Skin of the Boy who Changed his Destiny</h3>&#13; &#13; <p> — for Sherman Alexie​</p>&#13; &#13; <p>A child is born unto this world.<br />&#13; He brings with him<br />&#13; the skin that has been given him,</p>&#13; &#13; <p>the load that has been shifted to him,<br />&#13; and the gift that has been offered him.<br />&#13; From these things the child forms </p>&#13; &#13; <p>early on, a secret code,<br />&#13; that might in fact be better known<br />&#13; as salmon, or bear, or prayer,</p>&#13; &#13; <p>or perhaps a kind of living law. <br />&#13; Heredity claims the shape of the jaw.<br />&#13; Geography shapes the palm of the hand.  </p>&#13; &#13; <p>The dying of the mother tongue<br />&#13; punctuates the northern star,<br />&#13; while all powerful Destiny</p>&#13; &#13; <p>stands in the wings, in awe. <br />&#13; It has been said that all laboring<br />&#13; in service of soul</p>&#13; &#13; <p>is done in the dark,<br />&#13; that nothing’s truer than the autumn leaf,<br />&#13; and the life of the mind</p>&#13; &#13; <p>is best described<br />&#13; as a kind of collective dream.  The skin<br />&#13; of the boy who changed his destiny</p>&#13; &#13; <p>is mottled as the moth, is storied<br />&#13; as the mother tree, and bears the mark<br />&#13; of violence and legacy,</p>&#13; &#13; <p>of tenderness, and melody,<br />&#13; where gift and load and forgiveness form<br />&#13; with destiny,</p>&#13; &#13; <p>a certain solidarity,<br />&#13; and the closest the gifted child comes<br />&#13; to medicine, or remedy. </p>&#13; &#13; <h3><strong>Deconstruction</strong></h3>&#13; &#13; <p>The chickadee is all about truth<br />&#13; The finch is a token. The albatross<br />&#13; is always an omen. The kestrel is mental,<br />&#13; the lark is luck, the grouse is dance,<br />&#13; the goose is quest.  The need for speed<br />&#13; is given the peregrine, and the dove’s<br />&#13; been blessed with the feminine. </p>&#13; &#13; <p>The quail is word, and culpability. <br />&#13; The crane is the dean of poetry.<br />&#13; The swift is the means to agility,<br />&#13; the waxwing mere civility,<br />&#13; the sparrow a nod to working class</p>&#13; &#13; <p>nobility.  The puffin’s the brother<br />&#13; of laughter, and prayer, the starling the student<br />&#13; of Baudelaire. The mockingbird<br />&#13; is the sound of redress, the grackle the uncle<br />&#13; of excess. The flicker is rhythm,</p>&#13; &#13; <p>the ostrich is earth, the bluebird a simple<br />&#13; symbol of mirth. The oriole<br />&#13; is the fresh start. The magpie prince<br />&#13; of the dark arts. The swallow is home<br />&#13; and protection -- the vulture the priest</p>&#13; &#13; <p>of purification, the heron a font<br />&#13; of self-reflection.  The swisher belongs<br />&#13; to the faery realm. Resourcefulness<br />&#13; is the cactus wren.  The pheasant is sex,<br />&#13; the chicken is egg, the eagle is free,</p>&#13; &#13; <p>the canary the bringer of ecstasy.<br />&#13; The martin is peace.  The stork is release.<br />&#13; The swan is the mother of cool discretion. <br />&#13; The loon is the watery voice of the moon. <br />&#13; The owl’s the keeper of secrets, grief,<br />&#13; and fresh fallen snow, and the crow<br />&#13; has the bones of the ancestral soul.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>First published in <em>Hudson Review</em> and reprinted in <em>Best American Poetry</em></p>&#13; &#13; <h3>Merchant Culture</h3>&#13; &#13; <p><em>What</em><em>’</em><em>s the going rate for a poem these days? </em><br />&#13; — Jack Mueller</p>&#13; &#13; <p>I’ll trade you a drop of snow</p>&#13; &#13; <p>for a lyrical poem,<br />&#13; a parking lot for a muffled moan,<br />&#13; the justice card<br />&#13; for the nine of swords<br />&#13; a soldier’s heart<br />&#13; for a kettle of gold<br />&#13; a kindly verb<br />&#13; for the face of your lord,<br />&#13; a Persian word for an off<br />&#13; chord,<br />&#13; a thousand tears,<br />&#13; a million tomes,<br />&#13; a drop of snow<br />&#13; for a lyrical poem.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>First published in <em>Rattle</em></p>&#13; &#13; <h3>What You’ve Been Given</h3>&#13; &#13; <p>Here lie the things you have been given:<br />&#13; the unabridged and the riven,<br />&#13; the easy breeze, the unforgiven,<br />&#13; the throw-away, the hard wrought,</p>&#13; &#13; <p>the speed rail, the train of thought,<br />&#13; the all is calm and all is not,<br />&#13; the darkest spark, the clearest bead,</p>&#13; &#13; <p>the soft shoe, the stampede,<br />&#13; the germ of greed, the store of thanks,<br />&#13; the standard flaw, the saving grace,</p>&#13; &#13; <p>the perfect night, the wanting dawn,<br />&#13; the white noise, the black swan,<br />&#13; the aria, the mad song.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Do thy best. <br />&#13; Pass it on.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>First published in <em>Hudson Review</em></p>&#13; &#13; <h3>A Lizard in Spanish Valley</h3>&#13; &#13; <p>A lizard does not make a sound,<br />&#13; it has no song,<br />&#13; it does not share my love affairs<br />&#13; with flannel sheets,<br />&#13; bearded men, interlocking<br />&#13; silver rings, the moon,<br />&#13; the sea, or ink.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>But sitting here the afternoon,<br />&#13; I’ve come to believe<br />&#13; we do share a love affair<br />&#13; and a belief —<br />&#13; in wink, blink, stone,<br />&#13; and heat.<br />&#13; Also, air.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>This is not a fable,<br />&#13; nor is it bliss.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Impatience,<br />&#13; remember this.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>First published in <em>Poetry</em> magazine</p>&#13; </div>&#13; </div>&#13; &#13; <p> All poems are Copyright 2018</p>&#13; </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- 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http://coloradoencyclopedia.org Lisa Zimmerman http://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/lisa-zimmerman <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--title--encyclopedia-article.html.twig x field--node--title.html.twig * field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--title.html.twig * field--string.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">Lisa Zimmerman</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--uid--encyclopedia-article.html.twig x field--node--uid.html.twig * field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--uid.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--uid.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'username' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/user/username.html.twig' --> <span lang="" about="/users/yongli" typeof="schema:Person" property="schema:name" datatype="">yongli</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/user/username.html.twig' --> </span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--uid.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--created--encyclopedia-article.html.twig x field--node--created.html.twig * field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--created.html.twig * field--created.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 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addtoany_list" data-a2a-url="http://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/lisa-zimmerman" data-a2a-title="Lisa Zimmerman"><a class="a2a_dd addtoany_share" href="https://www.addtoany.com/share#url=http%3A%2F%2Fcoloradoencyclopedia.org%2Farticle%2Flisa-zimmerman&amp;title=Lisa%20Zimmerman"></a><a class="a2a_button_facebook"></a><a class="a2a_button_twitter"></a><a class="a2a_button_email"></a></span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/addtoany/templates/addtoany-standard.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--body--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--body.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--body.html.twig * field--text-with-summary.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item" id="id-body"><p class="rtecenter"><img alt="Poet: Lisa Zimmerman" src="/sites/default/files/Lisa_Zimmerman.jpg" style="width: 500px; height: 479px;" /></p> <p>Lisa Zimmerman’s poems and short stories have appeared in Cave Wall, Poet Lore, Florida Review, and many other magazines. Her poetry collections include The Light at the Edge of Everything (Tallahassee, FL: Anhinga Press, 2008) and The Hours I Keep (Mint Hill, NC: Main Street Rag, 2016). She teaches at the University of Northern Colorado and lives in <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/fort-collins">Fort Collins</a> beside a small lake.</p> <h2>Poems</h2> <h3>Distracted by Science</h3> <p>I spend too much time in the garden<br /> studying the overflowing compost bin<br /> with its unraveled orange rinds, furry<br /> burned bagels, sour oatmeal, plush gray<br /> mice darting in and out of slimy noodles,<br /> blackened fragments of cabbage, slowly<br /> decomposing wheat bread and I remember<br /> how the discovery of penicillin began<br /> with mold in a Petri dish.</p> <p>When I finally return to the kitchen<br /> the boiling rice has scorched the pot, proving<br /> a scientific fact about time and water<br /> evaporating first into steam<br /> and then into nothing.</p> <p>First published in <em>Four Ties Lit Review</em> (2014).</p> <h3>Small Winged Ode</h3> <p>I was going to praise the great rise<br /> of peaks above the bustling town,<br /> their ripped sleeves of snow, the gleam<br /> of the silver green river below</p> <p>but then the young poet beside me<br /> whispered <em>You have a ladybug<br /> in your hair</em> and the tiny creature<br /> walked from her finger onto mine.</p> <p>Nothing to do then but open one door,<br /> then another, carry her in my cupped hand<br /> into the yellow air of afternoon</p> <p>and set her down on a striped leaf<br /> on a bush below those grand<br /> and spectacular mountains.</p> <p>First published in <em>The Hours I Keep</em> (Mint Hill, NC: Main Street Rag, 2016).</p> <h3>Against Winter</h3> <p>I want to memorize the poem about the knot<br /> even though it ends in winter<br /> not because it ends in death<br /> or how the “she” in the poem was ready.<br /> I want winter to end because<br /> acres of cold air bit the grass down<br /> to dry gold and worthless just the same.</p> <p>I can’t get beyond the sleepless dark<br /> windows with their ache of ice along the borders,<br /> quarrel of juncos in the birdfeeder,<br /> summer hammock in a shred<br /> of red and yellow cotton.</p> <p>I am ready to let this January curtain close,<br /> let the whole room get quiet, little candle<br /> in the corner dying out, then open<br /> to a farmer burning spring weeds<br /> in the ditch, fire singing the insects awake,<br /> the sun a bright knot crackling over the planted field.</p> <p>First published in <em>The Hours I Keep</em> (Mint Hill, NC: Main Street Rag, 2016).</p> <h3>Perhaps the Truth Depends</h3> <p>on a walk around a lake, said Stevens.<br /> Perhaps my dog trotting ahead of me</p> <p>on the path around the lake will find it<br /> first. He’s got the whole world</p> <p>in his nostrils. I think he’s on a mission<br /> for the truth but then we’re both distracted</p> <p>by a turtle’s splash in the green water<br /> inside towering stalks of cattails</p> <p>and the redwing blackbird’s notes sliding<br /> down the ladder of its throat.</p> <p>Perhaps the truth purrs in the engine<br /> of a small plane overhead or the soft</p> <p>silver ears of mullein leaves that stop me<br /> around the curve. Maybe it depends</p> <p>on focus—blue needle of a dragonfly<br /> above black-eyed Susans,</p> <p>the rustling whip of a garter snake<br /> through waves of orchard grass</p> <p>or perhaps in the way a blue heron<br /> stills above the shadowy water,</p> <p>the gleaming fish of his desire<br /> just below the surface.</p> <p>This poem is included in <em>The Hours I Keep</em> (Mint Hill, NC: Main Street Rag, 2016).</p> <h3>How the Garden Looks from Here</h3> <p>The cat finds her way among herbs<br /> while bees follow each other into an audience</p> <p>of blossoms. Already a door on the house<br /> has opened into sunlight and a woman</p> <p>sits at a wheel and shapes a bowl<br /> from a flake of earth. The dog yawns</p> <p>beside her, waiting. No one notices<br /> the horses moving, slow as stars,</p> <p>across the dry grass<br /> of sky.</p> <p>First published in <em>How the Garden Looks from Here</em> (Valdosta, GA: Snake Nation Press, 2004).</p> <h3>The Wind, the Lake, the Deer</h3> <p>What is wind? the way it spends itself<br /> against the house, sleeps briefly<br /> like a child in fever, then wakes afraid<br /> and unintelligible, when it wants to be<br /> more than a barren woman raking<br /> the lake into fits of momentary white.</p> <p>I dreamt of scarves in turquoise and fuchsia<br /> that said <em>here, here is joy in focus</em>,<br /> and wakened later to you<br /> coming inside from the morning's blue chill<br /> to say that deer ate the red tulips<br /> in the dark while we slept.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</p> <p>First published in <em>How the Garden Looks from Here</em> (Valdosta, GA: Snake Nation Press, 2004).</p> <h3>Not about Birds</h3> <p>My younger daughter’s first tattoo<br /> is a window, two birds inside one inked square.<br /> Hard to tell if they fly into or out of her body.</p> <p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; *</p> <p>I know a woman who chronicles her grief<br /> in poem after poem as her body dissolves into smallest<br /> windows of lace the doctors can’t see through.</p> <p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; *</p> <p>In a town in Wyoming my son looks through the window<br /> of a newspaper box labeled “Free Poems” and chooses one at random<br /> and reads it to me over the phone. Light and time balance</p> <p>the brief hour of a solstice sun and when I watch a small fish<br /> break the murky window of the lake behind the house<br /> for a moment I am not sad about anything.</p> <p>First published in <em>Apple Valley Review</em> (2016).</p> <h3>Reappearances</h3> <p><em>After a painting by Gayle Crites</em></p> <p>Why the bruised dress? Why the lonely sleepwalk?<br /> That is not blood you move through,<br /> not the scorched aftermath of sunset<br /> in the immediate distance. You breathe<br /> an ochre landscape. Your sisters<br /> carry their burdens with purpose</p> <p>so they are not burdens. Their arms<br /> swing free. They are beside you,<br /> above you, behind and before you.<br /> The black ash of men<br /> does not burn them.</p> <p>Elsewhere women feed babies, warbling<br /> small songs to drive sickness<br /> and sadness away. Everything begins<br /> as entrance.</p> <p>Your hands are empty.<br /> Keep walking. Keep singing.</p> <p>First published in <em>Sonic Boom </em>(2018).</p> <h3>Avalon and the Dinosaurs</h3> <p>For days she wore only the aqua sweatshirt<br /> spaghetti stained with grimy cuffs,<br /> the brontosaurus beaming out at us from her chest<br /> the words EXTINCT IS FOREVER, which she cannot read,<br /> floating below his happy face.<br /> He is her friend<br /> she wears him like an emblem<br /> through the lacquered afternoon<br /> stomping through the house, her private rain forest.<br /> And we know as we watch her<br /> that she expects to spot him at any time<br /> around some corner, in the garden, or at least at the zoo<br /> where surely all creatures are saved and celebrated.<br /> How she would pat and embrace him<br /> her hand a white leaf against his skin.<br /> She would feed him bits of bread, rice, sliced banana, anything<br /> to see him tremble with joy<br /> down the length of his great uncomplicated body.</p> <p>Then one morning she approached us<br /> just risen from sleep and said <em>All the</em> <em>dinosaurs died</em><br /> with a grief so deep and pure we could only<br /> nod and apologize and regret—<br /> she learned so soon that what we love<br /> moves on sometimes across the dreamy landscape<br /> long before we ever hold it in our arms.</p> <p>First published in <em>How the Garden Looks from Here</em> (Valdosta, GA: Snake Nation Press, 2004).</p> <h3>Oklahoma, 1885</h3> <p>Her brown hand shades her eyes<br /> but there is only the meadowlark, out of nowhere,<br /> all the other women so far away<br /> their voices are nothing to this wind<br /> beating the one tree down into prayer.</p> <p>Sod house and no way to keep the centipedes<br /> and small snakes from the walls so she stands<br /> out on what would be a front stoop<br /> while day travels toward her as heat<br /> rising over the barren field.</p> <p>On this terrain the rivers are only rumor,<br /> the gullies beneath full of wasted hope<br /> creased and rippled as an unmade bed.<br /> Tips of yellow grass lead to her house<br /> the door a mouth gaping.<br /> Hot wind blows the clouds north<br /> and all the while kicks the milk pail dry.<br /> <em>I was so lonely I carried a beetle in my apron pocket<br /> all day, to and fro to and fro.</em></p> <p>First published in <em>How the Garden Looks from Here</em> (Valdosta, GA: Snake Nation Press, 2004).</p> <p>All poems are&nbsp;Copyright 2018</p> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-keyword--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--field-keyword.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--field-keyword.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div 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field--node--title.html.twig * field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--title.html.twig * field--string.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">Beth Paulson</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--uid--encyclopedia-article.html.twig x field--node--uid.html.twig * field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--uid.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--uid.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'username' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/user/username.html.twig' --> <span lang="" about="/users/yongli" typeof="schema:Person" property="schema:name" datatype="">yongli</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/user/username.html.twig' --> </span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--uid.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--created--encyclopedia-article.html.twig x field--node--created.html.twig * field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--created.html.twig * field--created.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--created.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'time' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/time.html.twig' --> <time datetime="2019-01-24T15:16:16-07:00" title="Thursday, January 24, 2019 - 15:16" class="datetime">Thu, 01/24/2019 - 15:16</time> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/time.html.twig' --> </span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--created.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'addtoany_standard' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * addtoany-standard--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * addtoany-standard--node.html.twig x addtoany-standard.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/addtoany/templates/addtoany-standard.html.twig' --> <span class="a2a_kit a2a_kit_size_32 addtoany_list" data-a2a-url="http://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/beth-paulson" data-a2a-title="Beth Paulson"><a class="a2a_dd addtoany_share" href="https://www.addtoany.com/share#url=http%3A%2F%2Fcoloradoencyclopedia.org%2Farticle%2Fbeth-paulson&amp;title=Beth%20Paulson"></a><a class="a2a_button_facebook"></a><a class="a2a_button_twitter"></a><a class="a2a_button_email"></a></span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/addtoany/templates/addtoany-standard.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--body--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--body.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--body.html.twig * field--text-with-summary.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item" id="id-body"><p class="rtecenter"><img alt="Poet: Beth Paulson" src="/sites/default/files/Beth_Paulson.jpg" style="width: 600px; height: 453px;" /></p>&#13; &#13; <p>Beth Paulson lives in <strong><a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/ouray-county">Ouray County</a></strong>, Colorado where she teaches workshops, leads Poetica, a monthly workshop for area writers, and co-directs the Open Bard Poetry Series.  She formerly taught English at California State University Los Angeles for twenty-two years. Her poems have been published nationally in over 200 journals and anthologies and have four times been nominated for Pushcart Prizes. Beth’s fifth collection of poems, <em>Immensity</em>, was published in 2016 by Kelsay Books. Her website is <a href="https://wordcatcher.org/">www.wordcatcher.org</a>.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Poems</h2>&#13; &#13; <h3>Kites</h3>&#13; &#13; <p><em>Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world</em>.  <em>Edna St. Vincent Millay<br />&#13; You were born with wings.  Jalal-al-din-Rumi</em></p>&#13; &#13; <p>Diamond of rainbow cloth, bent sticks<br />&#13; tail of ribbon trails behind,<br />&#13; all it does is scud along</p>&#13; &#13; <p>unwinding its fat ball of string<br />&#13; while spring blows steady in our faces<br />&#13; park grass under us a sea</p>&#13; &#13; <p>we run through, arms outstretched<br />&#13; like these blackbirds looping near<br />&#13; with their capable, unerring wings.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Suddenly it wheels and dives,<br />&#13; then climbs into the cloud-streaked sky:<br />&#13; a silk-clad jockey riding fast</p>&#13; &#13; <p>or dancer costumed in bright sari?<br />&#13; Borne by gusts it rises high,<br />&#13; so much smaller far away</p>&#13; &#13; <p>from us, feet tethered to the earth,<br />&#13; eyes looking up to marvel at:<br />&#13; does a kite strain to be free?</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Sometimes the string you hold breaks<br />&#13; and there’s nothing you can do.<br />&#13; Sometimes people just leave you.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>How tenuous are all connections:<br />&#13; we are, far as we can see,<br />&#13; just holding on at wind’s mercy.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>First published in <em>Cloudbank </em>(journal of contemporary writing). Also appears in <em>Canyon Notes </em>(Ridgway, CO: Mt. Sneffels Press, 2012).</p>&#13; &#13; <h3>Seventeen Ways of Saying Rain</h3>&#13; &#13; <p><em>In the Japanese language, there are seventeen words for rain. </em>Dianne Ackerman</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Rain that makes the yellow leaves fall, rain that drips from a downspout into the mint patch, rain that beats a tattoo on the metal roof, rain that soaks through a waterproof jacket, rain that hangs like small pearls on spruce branches, rain that turns river water to café au lait, rain that collects on the backs of black and white cows, rain on marsh marigolds that was snow yesterday, rain that rolls rocks down onto a mountain pass, rain that makes dust puffs rise from dry earth, rain that shines through July afternoon sunlight,  rain that smells of wood stacks and wood smoke,  rain that hisses on asphalt under truck wheels, rain that unearths mushrooms in the forest , rain that paints deep red the sandstone cliffs, rain that bends down the faces of sunflowers, rain that mingles with tears.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>First published in <em>Mountain Gazette </em>(2016). Also appears in <em>Immensity</em> (Kelsay Books, 2016).</p>&#13; &#13; <h3>The Color of Snow</h3>&#13; &#13; <p>Vermeer asked the maid<br /><em>What color are clouds?</em><br />&#13; and he wouldn’t take white<br />&#13; for an answer. She looked<br />&#13; hard at the Delft sky<br />&#13; then, slow, replied<br /><em>yellow</em> and <em>green</em>….<em>red</em>!</p>&#13; &#13; <p>In snow I see red, too,<br />&#13; on my way down Miller Mesa.<br />&#13; I’ve been snowshoeing,<br />&#13; soft slapping and crunching<br />&#13; what’s new fallen,<br />&#13; all afternoon following<br />&#13; winter-transformed trails<br />&#13; through untouched meadows,<br />&#13; hushed forest of laden pines<br />&#13; and naked aspens, leaving<br />&#13; a giant’s deep tracks.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Now the sky’s lavender<br />&#13; and the distant peaks<br />&#13; I try to name violet<br />&#13; as late sun paints shadows<br />&#13; on boulders and drifts,<br />&#13; broad brushstrokes<br />&#13; over a canvas of foothills,<br />&#13; sometimes blue and <em>yes</em> green.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>First published in <em>The Aurorean</em> (2008) and nominated for 2009 Pushcart Prize. Also appears in <em>Wild Raspberries </em>(Austin, TX: Plainview Press, 2009)</p>&#13; &#13; <h3>All or Nothing</h3>&#13; &#13; <p>Nothing will do but to admit             <br />&#13; there is a lot of you, nothing,</p>&#13; &#13; <p>expanding, curving, exploding, birthing<br />&#13; throughout the universe, without ceasing,</p>&#13; &#13; <p>shape shifter with no mass or charge--<br />&#13; there is just no way to measure you.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Big zero. Nil. Nada.<br />&#13; Our best thinkers can’t detect you</p>&#13; &#13; <p>but only suspect you are behind        <br />&#13; every insect wing, giant redwood,</p>&#13; &#13; <p>fiery star and human being,               <br />&#13; lurking between every atom,                                   </p>&#13; &#13; <p>holding together everything that exists.<br />&#13; Before Einstein you were named</p>&#13; &#13; <p><em>Ether</em> and <em>Vacuum</em><br />&#13; but some now say you are eleven strings</p>&#13; &#13; <p>of nothing (or maybe shards of subatomic particles).<br />&#13; I think I’ll call you <em>invisible glue.</em></p>&#13; &#13; <p>Both absence and presence,<br />&#13; you are the hole inside the empty bucket,</p>&#13; &#13; <p>biblical void, wholly ghost,<br />&#13; suffused with unknown potential,</p>&#13; &#13; <p>proof something comes from nothing.<br />&#13; Without you everything would be lost.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>You are the white paper for my uncertain pen.<br />&#13; You are the air I step through above this broken sidewalk.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>First published <em>Sierra Nevada Review </em>(2015). Also appears in <em>Immensity </em>(Kelsay Books, 2016).</p>&#13; &#13; <h3>Shooting Stars at Ghost Ranch</h3>&#13; &#13; <p style="margin-left:.5in;"><em>What is it we are a part of we do not see</em>?<br />&#13; —Loren Eiseley​</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Such brightness in the immense<br />&#13; blackness I try to comprehend.<br />&#13; A universe 13 billion years old,<br />&#13; space-time, curved with strings<br />&#13; that sound in ten dimensions,<br />&#13; transparent matter holding together<br />&#13; billions of stars and planets.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>This August night<br />&#13; I only know Earth I call <em>home </em><br />&#13; is orbiting through a far-off field,<br />&#13; bits and pieces of comet rock<br />&#13; slamming into our atmosphere<br />&#13; lighting up nighttime.<br />&#13; Brilliant Perseid meteors<br />&#13; more than fifty we count<br />&#13; an hour, their persistent trains<br />&#13; lacing across the constellations<br />&#13; in a New Mexican sky on top of<br />&#13; a sleeping mesa where we sit<br />&#13; in a small galaxy of armchairs<br />&#13; and I murmur to you <em>Ohhh </em><br />&#13; as each passes over our heads,<br />&#13; falling, burning itself up and out.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>First published in <em>Immensity </em>(Kelsay Books, 2016)</p>&#13; &#13; <h3>Solo Hiking, Utah</h3>&#13; &#13; <p>Silent spires fill sight<br />&#13; light rises on red bluffs</p>&#13; &#13; <p>buttes and blue sky<br />&#13; climb to cairns cross</p>&#13; &#13; <p>slick rock fins wind-faced<br />&#13; grasp bend and tread</p>&#13; &#13; <p>grip and scale boulders<br />&#13; scrape body to rock face</p>&#13; &#13; <p>then stem and press chest<br />&#13; against walls or walk</p>&#13; &#13; <p>on knees, reel and breathe<br />&#13; deep air.  In a layered</p>&#13; &#13; <p>and pocked slot of knotted<br />&#13; tree roots lift hips from the slit</p>&#13; &#13; <p>when boots slip then<br />&#13; slide down lichened stone</p>&#13; &#13; <p>sides of time-molded folds<br />&#13; and crab-crawl across ledge</p>&#13; &#13; <p>edges sensing each measure<br />&#13; of descent to sand dune</p>&#13; &#13; <p>noon oasis of old juniper<br />&#13; shade to a curved cave</p>&#13; &#13; <p>where wind whispers time<br />&#13; and an arch opens like an eye.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>First published in <em>Immensity </em>(Kelsay Books, 2016)</p>&#13; &#13; <h3>Land That Moves Back and Forth</h3>&#13; &#13; <p>Between umber sand, blue-streaked sky,<br />&#13; existence is a thin layer, place<br />&#13; Ute people named <em>Sowapopheuyehe,<br />&#13; land that moves back and forth,</em><br />&#13; where you finger-sift a handful into mine,<br />&#13; grains so fine that once were mountains.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Ten miles out we watched cloud shadows<br />&#13; sweep across dun-colored hills<br />&#13; transformed to massive dunes<br />&#13; back-dropped by Sangre de Christos​<br />&#13; over 14,000 feet, snow-capped in October.<br />&#13; Closer still the mounds lengthened,<br />&#13; unmetamorphic expanse stretched north<br />&#13; to south, a changing, ancient horizon.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Out of the car our feet touch down on<br />&#13; whatever sand last night blew in.<br />&#13; We inhale pungent yellow rabbit brush,<br />&#13; frame photos in gray-green rice grass.<br />&#13; Below us Medano Creek’s silver curve<br />&#13; glints in sunlight, its shallows cold<br />&#13; we wade through, bare-toed in Tevas.</p>&#13; &#13; <p><em>Water, sand, wind-</em>-we only need three words.<br />&#13; You reach out your hand to pull me<br />&#13; when we slow-climb the closest one,<br />&#13; higher, deeper as air swirls, sands sting,<br />&#13; form waves we ride to the summit,<br />&#13; squint at behind sunglasses<br />&#13; before gravity pulls us like moonwalkers.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>All day time’s construct expands.<br />&#13; I hold breath to meet it,<br />&#13; watch afternoon light spill, shadows shift<br />&#13; over dune faces, sands shape to fold, hollow, slope.<br /><em>Perdonanos nuestros pecados tambien.<br />&#13; Forgive us also our trespasses.</em></p>&#13; &#13; <p>By night we’ve grown spare, our need only<br />&#13; to shelter in fragrant sage under <em>alimosas.</em><br />&#13; Hours slow.  Awareness swells.<br />&#13; Ripple to bar, drift to ridge,<br />&#13; sand has already erased our footprints</p>&#13; &#13; <p>.</p>&#13; &#13; <h3>Carousel</h3>&#13; &#13; <p>With his small hands the eager child<br />&#13; grins and grips the fat brass pole<br />&#13; astride a sleek cream-colored pony<br />&#13; with painted wreath and legs a-gallop.</p>&#13; &#13; <p> </p>&#13; &#13; <p>He reaches out for its carved mane<br />&#13; as around in a parade he rides<br />&#13; and leans his head back to look<br />&#13; up high in a red canopy<br />&#13; where a hundred or more white lights shine<br />&#13; on mirrors and pictures in golden frames<br />&#13; where an organ hid somewhere inside<br />&#13; plays circus music.  His eyes roam</p>&#13; &#13; <p>as he holds still and the world revolves--<br />&#13; sky and park and trees and people--<br />&#13; while his parents, moving slowly past him,<br />&#13; smile and wave one more time<br />&#13; and then he remembers their faces.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>First published in <em>Innisfree </em>(2011). Also appears in <em>Canyon Notes </em>(Ridgway, CO: Mt. Sneffels Press, 2012).</p>&#13; &#13; <h3>Red Fox</h3>&#13; &#13; <p>A blaze of gold<br />&#13;             more than red<br />&#13; in early evening light,<br />&#13;             you strode slow through snow-<br />&#13; dusted new grass, skirting<br />&#13;             a low hill behind the house.<br />&#13; Then black ears pointed up, you sensed<br />&#13;             my presence on the porch<br />&#13; and turned your sleek head, sharp nose,<br />&#13;             toward me quick-<br />&#13; flashing black bead eyes.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>How you lit up<br />&#13;             the dull afternoon<br />&#13; with your confidence<br />&#13;             and bravado</p>&#13; &#13; <p>and in that moment gave me<br />&#13;             a grim hint of your intent<br />&#13; before you trod soundless<br />&#13;             to the forest edge<br />&#13; where lesser creatures live.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Bright hunter—<br />&#13;             what more do I have<br />&#13; to fear or desire?</p>&#13; &#13; <p>First published in <em>Terrain </em>(2008). Also appears in <em>Wild Raspberries </em>(Austin, TX: Plain View Press, 2009).</p>&#13; &#13; <h3>Except for Crows</h3>&#13; &#13; <p>I consider you common crow,<br />&#13; beautiful  black rag in the sky.<br />&#13; Some call you trash bird<br />&#13; but I see you sleek,<br />&#13; slick in a silk suit,<br />&#13; in the best seat of the cottonwood.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>True, you are often the undertaker<br />&#13; bobbing along side the road,<br />&#13; your voice perhaps too eager<br />&#13; broadcasting in clamorous caws news<br />&#13; of what to eat that’s dead.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>I, whose heavy feet find only earth,<br />&#13; envy your perspective of gravity<br />&#13; and that among other birds<br />&#13; of less proven intelligence.<br />&#13; you don’t even display smugness.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Some campers have tried<br />&#13; tricking you with ropes into thinking<br />&#13; you were trapped inside a circle,<br />&#13; but you showed them<br />&#13; (first with one foot, then the other)<br />&#13; you know how to test boundaries.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>I especially admire your monogamy,<br />&#13; the way two of you travel<br />&#13; through life’s blue air<br />&#13; seventy years or more, sometimes<br />&#13; resting on stretched wires or in trees<br />&#13; whose branches move slightly<br />&#13; with your dark weight.<br />&#13; And high inside rock clefts<br />&#13; you raise your young<br />&#13; to ignore all the trash talk<br />&#13; and to believe in the beauty<br />&#13; of their own blackness.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>First published in <em>The Kerf</em> (2003). Also appears in <em>The Company of Trees </em>(Ponderosa Press, 2004).</p>&#13; </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-keyword--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--field-keyword.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--field-keyword.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-keyword field--type-entity-reference field--label-above" id="id-field-keyword"> <div class="field__label" id="id-field-keyword">Keywords</div> <div class='field__items'> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/art" hreflang="en">Art</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a 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http://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/veronica-patterson <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--title--encyclopedia-article.html.twig x field--node--title.html.twig * field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--title.html.twig * field--string.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">Veronica Patterson</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--uid--encyclopedia-article.html.twig x field--node--uid.html.twig * field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--uid.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 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addtoany_list" data-a2a-url="http://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/veronica-patterson" data-a2a-title="Veronica Patterson"><a class="a2a_dd addtoany_share" href="https://www.addtoany.com/share#url=http%3A%2F%2Fcoloradoencyclopedia.org%2Farticle%2Fveronica-patterson&amp;title=Veronica%20Patterson"></a><a class="a2a_button_facebook"></a><a class="a2a_button_twitter"></a><a class="a2a_button_email"></a></span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/addtoany/templates/addtoany-standard.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--body--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--body.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--body.html.twig * field--text-with-summary.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item" id="id-body"><p class="rtecenter"><img alt="Poet: Veronica Patterson" src="/sites/default/files/Veronica_Patterson.jpg" style="width: 500px; height: 500px;" /></p> <p>Veronica Patterson’s most recent full-length poetry collection is <em>Sudden White Fan</em> (Cherry Grove Collections, 2018). Others include <em>How to Make a Terrarium</em> (Cleveland State University, 1987), <em>Swan, What Shores?</em> (NYU Press Poetry Prize, 2000), <em>Thresh &amp; Hold </em>(Gell Poetry Prize, 2009), <em>&amp; it had rained</em> (CW Books, 2013), and two chapbooks—<em>This Is the Strange Part</em> (Pudding House, 2002) and <em>Maneuvers: Battle of the Little Bighorn Poems</em> (Finishing Line, 2013). She lives in Loveland, Colorado, where she writes, edits, and teaches creative writing for the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute.</p> <h2>Poems</h2> <h3>Margaret</h3> <p><em>—for my mother</em></p> <p>Margaret is a field.<br /> In the field goldenrod thickens. Weeds grow so tall<br /> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; that by August you can’t see.<br /> Margaret is a path through the field and she is where<br /> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; the path disappears.<br /> Margaret is the house with the red door and the room<br /> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; with the maroon floor, where four children sleep a troubled sleep.<br /> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; When they wake she sends them outside and they raise a calf,<br /> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; a collie, each other.<br /> Margaret smokes so she can see each sigh. She smokes constantly.<br /> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The ashtrays overflow. Later, as therapy, she will make ashtrays.<br /> Margaret is a dream Margaret once had. Margaret drinks toward the dream<br /> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; she can’t quite forget and doesn’t dare remember. She wakes<br /> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; to choose sleep.<br /> She is a wrong turn Margaret took or several turns. She is bad about<br /> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; directions.<br /> Margaret is not a door that opens nor cruelty nor a bed nor forgiveness.<br /> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; But she can be forgiven.<br /> I repeat, Margaret is a field and a path through the field and the point<br /> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; where the path disappears. She will not come to find you.<br /> Because she will not come to find you, you start out deep<br /> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; in this gold and weedy field.</p> <p>First published in <em>Colorado North Review</em>. Also appears in <em>Swan, What Shores?</em></p> <h3>Three Photographs Not of My Father</h3> <p>I am writing about this photograph of a rock<br /> &nbsp;&nbsp; because I am not writing about my father.<br /> The rock is not here. Neither is my father.<br /> The rock is alone. And my father?<br /> The photographer found the rock absorbing. It has<br /> &nbsp;&nbsp; no <strong><a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/rock-art-colorado">petroglyphs</a></strong>. What do I know of my father’s life?<br /> The sky is pure blue. My father was a chemist<br /> &nbsp;&nbsp; who distilled liquid to vapor then liquid again,<br /> &nbsp;&nbsp; the way dreams precipitate into worlds.<br /> The rock lies in a desert. What was his dream?</p> <p>I am writing about a photograph of a girl on a motorcycle<br /> &nbsp;&nbsp; because I am still not writing about my father.<br /> She is grinning. In all the photographs, my father is grinning.<br /> She holds a cigarette. My father held a cigarette. Though my mother<br /> &nbsp;&nbsp; held a cigarette, she was far too beautiful for their fortune<br /> &nbsp;&nbsp; to be told.<br /> The girl straddles the motorcycle. My father raced cars.<br /> &nbsp;&nbsp; Around and around he orbited the waiting<br /> &nbsp;&nbsp; family and never left, and left.&nbsp;</p> <p>I am writing about a photograph of a Buddhist man walking<br /> &nbsp;&nbsp; away because I am writing about my father.<br /> His face is turned away. My father’s face has turned away.<br /> The folds of his saffron robe surround him. My father wore a<br /> &nbsp;&nbsp; white lab coat.<br /> The monk crosses a wooden bridge, walks to a house roofed in<br /> &nbsp;&nbsp; grass.<br /> My father told stories that grew longer in the middle. He died<br /> &nbsp;&nbsp; mid-sentence. Was he surprised to be so soon<br /> &nbsp; like the boy in the story he recited who stood on the burning deck?<br /> O captain, my captain, who will recite you? I, who was distilled<br /> &nbsp;&nbsp; in my father’s house, I?</p> <p>First published in <em>Salt Hill Journal</em>. Also appears in <em>Swan, What Shores?</em></p> <h3>Threshold</h3> <p>The night you lay dying,<br /> there was a space around the house<br /> into which nothing <em>untoward</em> could come,<br /> in which nothing but your dying could take place.<br /> It was a hole in the field,<br /> like the hush into which a child is born. As if<br /> at all times, or whenever necessary,<br /> shafts of quiet pierce the world – we don’t know<br /> the ways of the soul.<br /> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; But we know how artists make a map<br /> of somewhere foreign, then telescope one spot forward,<br /> to show details. You lay on the bed,<br /> breathing hard. A lens of lamplight. Your husband<br /> on one side of you, I on the other. We told small, round stories,<br /> beads on a string we passed over you. As if<br /> that were our job, while yours was counting<br /> out your breaths to the last.</p> <p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; When I left, I took the waiting<br /> with me. But it wasn’t waiting; there was no time in it.<br /> I woke before dawn, with these words,<br /> “Why do you seek the dead among the living?” The call came,<br /> like news of someone arrived safely in another country.<br /> I am always surprised that the word <em>threshold</em><br /> hinges on just one <em>h</em>. Each time, I write one for <em>thresh</em><br /> and one for <em>hold</em>.</p> <p>First published in <em>New Letters.</em> Also appears in <em>Thresh &amp; Hold </em>(Big Pencil Press, 2009).</p> <h3>How I Created the Universe</h3> <p><em>—for Evan</em></p> <p>First, I said, let there be light. I considered other things<br /> but light seemed a place to start. I could see where I was,<br /> where to go. I like to watch light on snow,<br /> so I made snow. Good light. Good snow.</p> <p>On the second day, I created your arms to divide me<br /> from chaos, which I also need.</p> <p>On the third day, I formed your body to fit mine; we spun<br /> like an axis, so I thought of and made the earth.</p> <p>On the fourth day, I created the children at their present ages,<br /> our house, the twelve pine trees in the yard, our street,<br /> our jobs, garbage, and a truck to collect it Thursdays.</p> <p>On the fifth day, I made history, so we would know<br /> what we'd done, and women's rights, so we wouldn't do it again.<br /> I made countries and people and newspapers to report them.<br /> I said, let there be Stephen Hawking, physicist in a wheelchair,<br /> to tie it all together and figure out how it might have happened<br /> if I hadn't made it myself.</p> <p>The sixth day dawned: I invented God to answer questions<br /> of suffering, which I did not invent, but which is,<br /> and love (which I made space for on day two), then<br /> restlessness and a true teacher.</p> <p>On the seventh day, I chanted more of the list: horizons,<br /> libraries, elephants, the Art Institute of Chicago, the<br /> French horn. I left some items to others. Last, poetry—<br /> the Williams, Shakespeare and Blake, and Emily Dickinson—<br /> and the second law of thermodynamics, all to strip disguises<br /> from order and chaos, and from then on there was no time,<br /> no place to rest until</p> <p>I remembered your arms the second day.</p> <p>First published in <em>Mid-American Review</em>. Also appears in <em>Swan, What Shores? </em>(New York: New York University Press, 2000).</p> <h3>A Short History of Arithmetic and Science</h3> <p>In first grade, <em>we</em> were the base, and a simple match of fingers and oranges led to the right answers. Or we added a picture of an orange to a picture of an orange, and then went on to lunch, storytime, a nap.</p> <p>When we got older, we had to leave our hands to consider weight, other fruits, prices: six oranges at twenty-five cents each or apples at so much a pound¾McIntosh, which were delicious and Delicious, which were not.</p> <p>Then life picked up speed and suddenly the train was leaving at 5:00 p.m. from a station 100 miles away and we had to get there in a car traveling 55 miles per hour or miss the one who was coming, first, by canoe (4 miles per hour) and bus (whose speed was unpredictable, which we would later call the uncertainty principle) to meet us in a city we had never been to.</p> <p>And if we got the answer right and rode the train all night and met the bus, would we pass, or be loved forever, though we couldn’t define love, for this was not English or philosophy or psychology, but math. What if we were off by a nanosecond, a billionth of a second, a near miss we could say but never think of?</p> <p>Meanwhile, someone had slipped in infinity, that figure skater’s requirement, and donuts with surfaces that never ended. We had to deal with powers, those smug little numbers above the others. And the stars, as it turned out, were light years away. And because light traveled at 186,300 miles per second, we loved beneath old, old light but felt new. And began to fear subtraction.</p> <p>Then it was calculus, and Einstein with his big E, and time started bending and space became a continuum we weren’t sure we were on. Quarks were the only Truth and black holes sucked in anyone who went too close and many followed like Jews to the station. The tinkertoy atom exploded and we, who once thought civilization was all geometric progression, stood with our mouths open zeros.</p> <p>Chaos kept turning into order, though it looked like chaos from here. We could not find randomness when we were looking for it. But we discovered that our cells replaced themselves at astonishing rates; we were new over and over but felt old.</p> <p>I have no answers¾differential, integral, or infinitesimal¾but this page is still my worksheet, and I fill in the blank that once I filled with long, long division with this equation: stay with me beneath the stars. I’m good at remainders.</p> <p>We’ll go out and recline like Cassiopeia and pretend that the dipper¾that looks tonight like it could scoop up the house¾<em>is</em> what will dip us up at last and pour us into another place with a different mathematics. We’ll peel and eat two oranges—one for me, one for you—lick our fingers and opposing thumbs before we walk together out onto the grass, among the 10,000 green blades.</p> <p>First published in <em>Swan, What Shores? </em>(New York: New York University Press, 2000).</p> <h3>Perseids, Later</h3> <p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; —for Evan</p> <p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; A tease of clouds intermits<br /> the searing blueblack. Cicadas<br /> drone in a 3 a.m. silence<br /> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; and I fall back</p> <p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; onto an Army blanket, 1956,<br /> a meadow outside Ithaca, lying with sister<br /> and brother, in the grip of fierce&nbsp;<br /> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; dreams and longings, my skin</p> <p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; alive with <em>up,</em><br /> drawn to the studded dark, whose<br /> tiny burns might be those of a sparkler<br /> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; twirled too fast.</p> <p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; This night, as you sleep inside,<br /> I lift binoculars to contain<br /> these pricking lights, which<br /> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; perforate,&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;</p> <p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;yet still pull me<br /> to them. Your dream wafts from the house,<br /> a stay. In waning heat, in my thin<br /> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; nightshirt, I feel</p> <p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; the years accordion,<br /> and I shiver. Each of us<br /> gets to be vast sometime. Three&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<br /> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; meteors streak</p> <p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; the length<br /> of a star-glazed strand<br /> of my hair. <em>How can the birds sleep<br /> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; in this confetti of light?</em></p> <p>First published in <em>Driftwood Review. </em>Also appears in <em>Sudden White Fan.</em></p> <h3>News of the World, 1887</h3> <p>—after Vincent Van Gogh’s <em>Grapes, Lemons, Pears, and Apples</em></p> <p>Nothing holds still. Lemons import a sharp light. The purple grapes have left behind<br /> the vineyards of history, which makes them luminous and sweet. The green grapes are<br /> like painters; even their jealousies have a certain flair. Yellow leaves gesture to autumn. Someone brought them in—rather than sorrow or ashes—from a walk. Here, they itch for wind and field again. One of five apples hurries off the canvas. Such <em>leaving</em>. But then, just for a moment, each fruit ponders its personal how-I-came-to-be-in-the-studio-this-morning. Hosting paint. None can imagine its long role as <em>the past</em>. Or see stems as wicks. The cosmos swirls here as a tablecloth, serving up everything. Note the rare pigment<em> burnt joy</em>.&nbsp;</p> <h3>Ludlow</h3> <p style="margin-left:.5in;"><em>In 1914, miners and their families were shot and killed<br /> by armed guards called in to break up the miners' camp.<br /> The incident came to be known as the <strong><a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/ludlow-massacre">Ludlow Massacre</a></strong>.</em></p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>There is hardly a sign of it now<br /> in the meadow that moves into two valleys<br /> just off the highway in southern Colorado.<br /> The grass sways in the breeze. It is<br /> a beautiful erasure.</p> <p>Down a road in a small fenced yard a monument lifts<br /> like a hand. There is a covered pit where striking miners,<br /> their wives and children died, pits like graves,<br /> then graves. It was 1914, early spring.</p> <p>Outside the fence is a box<br /> with a visitor’s notebook: “My father<br /> mined coal for thirty years. He died last fall<br /> of lung disease . . .” “This was a terrible time.<br /> It isn’t over . . .” The breeze<br /> riffles the pages.</p> <p>So this is history, I think: a father’s darkening lung,<br /> this meadow grown sweet and blank.<br /> Then the tenses stun me: this happened,<br /> this is happening, this will happen.<br /> I look again at the universe of grass and forgetting.</p> <p>I sign the book.</p> <p>Published in <em>Thresh &amp; Hold </em>(Big Pencil Press, 2009).</p> <h3>Signatures</h3> <p style="margin-left:.5in;"><em>“Artifacts are signatures of particular kinds of behavior.”</em><br /> —Richard A. Gould, in<em> Archeological Perspectives on the<br /> Battle of the Little Bighorn</em></p> <p>cartridge case arrowhead rib bullet obliquely severed cervical vertebra Spencer case evidence of extraction failure articulated arm bones of a young soldier eight trouser buttons four river cobbles fingerbone (encircled with a ring) Dimmick case right foot lower arm leg and foot (still encased in a cavalry boot) facial bones of a male (pipe smoker) butt-plate screw fob ring carbine swing swivel snap backstrap ejector rod button from an 1873 Colt revolver two cartridges struck by bullets distal ulna lead fragments Barlow-style pocket knife fire-steel loading lever forage-cap chin-strap tin cup canteen stopper-ring saddle guard plate trouser-buckle telescope eyepiece Remington bullet white porcelain shirt button harness rivet girth D-ring tip of gold-painted butcher knife flatnosed bullet with single crimping groove (bone embedded) Indian ornament made from cartridge cases suspender-grip tobacco-tag hook-and-eye watch movement regulator hand 1872 cavalry boot (upper cut away) general-service button (blue wool attached) femur mess-fork hoof pick cranial vault fragment (sky showing through)</p> <p>First published in <em>Coal City Review.</em> Also appears in <em>Maneuvers: Poems of the Battle of the Little Bighorn </em>(Georgetown, KY: Finishing Line Press, 2013).</p> <h3>My Edward Hopper Eye, My Claude Monet</h3> <p>I walk the streets at night<br /> shutting first one eye, then the other.</p> <p>The left eye is Hopper, its lens<br /> too clear for comfort, the hard lines<br /> of a town you're stuck in, always<br /> August, noon or midnight.</p> <p>The right eye haloes each street lamp.<br /> Threads of light dissolve each tree into<br /> the next in Paris, spring,<br /> dusk.</p> <p>Who could live in that Hopper city?<br /> Once I married there and became<br /> that beautician with hennaed hair<br /> and too many secrets, none her own.</p> <p>In Monet's garden of well-tended horizons<br /> I sleep three nights, then someone delivers<br /> a newspaper. In the damp green air<br /> events rub off on my hands.</p> <p>In every storm<br /> one eye watches bare light<br /> shock the land, split a tree;<br /> the other sees each gutter<br /> alive with wings and the rain rinsing.</p> <p>And so the eyes argue:<br /> one strips, one clothes. One cauterizes,<br /> one salves. And I<br /> walk on.</p> <p>First published in <em>Louisville Review</em>. Also appears in <em>Swan, What Shores? </em>(New York: New York University Press, 2000). The poem was also read by Garrison Keillor on his radio program, “Writer’s Almanac.”</p> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-keyword--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--field-keyword.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--field-keyword.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-keyword field--type-entity-reference field--label-above" id="id-field-keyword"> <div class="field__label" id="id-field-keyword">Keywords</div> <div class='field__items'> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/art" hreflang="en">Art</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a 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yongli 3026 at http://coloradoencyclopedia.org Robert Cooperman http://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/robert-cooperman <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--title--encyclopedia-article.html.twig x field--node--title.html.twig * field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--title.html.twig * field--string.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">Robert Cooperman</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--uid--encyclopedia-article.html.twig x field--node--uid.html.twig * field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--uid.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig * field.html.twig --> 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id="id-body"><p style="width: 100%; text-align: center;"><img alt="Robert Cooperman" src="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/sites/default/files/Robert_Cooperman_2.jpg" /></p> <p>Robert&nbsp;Cooperman&nbsp;is the author of many collections of poetry, most recently,&nbsp;<em>City Hat Frame Factory</em>.&nbsp;&nbsp;<em>In the Colorado Gold Fever Mountains</em>&nbsp;won the Colorado Book Award for Poetry.</p> <h2>Poems</h2> <h3>At the Denver Botanical Gardens</h3> <p>Beth and I have come early<br /> to view the on-loan Calders:<br /> whimsical bolted metal shapes<br /> reminiscent of Picasso’s flute playing<br /> goat-men and opulently endowed women,<br /> though these are more abstract,<br /> giant mobiles floating above babies’ cribs.</p> <p>It’s a treasure hunt to find the pieces,<br /> both of us racing to point, “Aha!”<br /> when we spot a black or blue or rust-<br /> colored mobile and stabile: a word,<br /> we read in the pamphlet, that means<br /> the pieces don’t move in the wind.</p> <p>Nothing seems to be moving this calm<br /> spring morning, except Beth and me<br /> as we stroll the grounds, admiring the artwork<br /> and the plants beautiful as sculptings,<br /> especially the hardy, prickly ones<br /> that had to adapt to a harsh, dry climate,<br /> like our favorites, the Spanish Bayonets:<br /> cellulose swords that home-owners plant<br /> under their otherwise easily burgled<br /> first-floor windows, the tips sharp<br /> as D’Artagnan’s or Zorro’s sabers.</p> <p>But here, they’re works of, if not art,<br /> then natural selection’s whittling<br /> and honing, to create the perfect shape<br /> for the perfect weapon.</p> <p>Copyright 2018 Robert Cooperman</p> <p>First published in <em>Slant</em> magazine</p> <h3>Stopping by Woods on Guanella Pass, Above Georgetown, Colorado</h3> <p>We drove from Denver for the changing leaves—<br /> the <strong>aspens</strong> turning gold and pumpkin-wild—<br /> and stopped to take photos among the trees.</p> <p>And since the drive had been long, we relieved<br /> ourselves off the trail; then we saw the sign<br /> among the vividly dying autumn leaves:</p> <p>“Attention!&nbsp;&nbsp; <a href="/article/mountain-lion"><strong>Mountain lions</strong></a> have been seen<br /> in this area.”&nbsp; And is that a pile<br /> of steaming scat beneath the lovely trees?</p> <p>We did our business fast as rain off eaves.<br /> and didn’t dare linger even a while<br /> among the gorgeous, flaming, golden leaves,</p> <p>but convinced ourselves something big was breath-​<br /> ing, scenting meat all down our freezing spines,<br /> stalking us in the blazing autumn trees.</p> <p>Secure in our car, we looked back, reprieved,<br /> almost hoping to see a shadow climb<br /> down, tawny in the gorgeous, golden leaves,<br /> a predator’s easy gait among the trees.</p> <p>Copyright 2018 Robert Cooperman</p> <p>First published in <em>Loch Raven Review</em></p> <h3>On the Corner</h3> <p>“Iraq War Vets, anything helps,”<br /> his sign reads; she sits, leaning<br /> against a pole, their belongings<br /> in knapsacks in front of her.</p> <p>He wears a smile ill-fitting<br /> as a thrift shop jacket;<br /> her head droops in dejection,<br /> her cigarette ash growing longer.</p> <p>They look like weary travelers<br /> in a strange city: no place to stay<br /> except maybe a park tonight,<br /> or a downtown shelter.</p> <p>Beth rolls down her window—<br /> heat a traffic cop’s raised palm—<br /> and hands him a bill; he blesses her.</p> <p>Beth sighs, and I think that guy<br /> could be me, though I never served;<br /> Beth rolls up her window,<br /> the air-conditioning scouring us.</p> <p>In our rearview mirror, he holds<br /> their sign like a cue card;<br /> her knees are jackknifed<br /> into her chest, her exhaustion<br /> in pitiless America immense<br /> as the Rockies west of Denver.</p> <p>Copyright 2018 Robert Cooperman</p> <p>First published in <em>Exit 13 Magazine</em></p> <h3>Warning at the Bank</h3> <p>by Robert Cooperman</p> <p>The sign at our local bank warned<br /> no one would be allowed in<br /> wearing shades and a baseball cap:<br /> apparently, bank robbers’ preferred attire.</p> <p>One guy pulled off a series of heists<br /> in a single day, maybe trying for the world,<br /> or at least the state, record, or his habit<br /> so desperate, his hauls barely kept pace<br /> with the drugs he shot, snorted, or smoked.</p> <p>But the last time I needed money,<br /> I noticed, no sign: maybe the manager<br /> complacent after a year of boring business<br /> without interruptions, or maybe no one<br /> paid attention, so the manager gave up.</p> <p>The tellers are all women, and though<br /> they may be undercover agents packing<br /> more concealed heat than Old West gamblers<br /> with hideout guns, and more expert<br /> at martial arts than Bruce Lee, I fear<br /> for them in their lovely friendliness,</p> <p>always asking about my weekend plans,<br /> showing off engagement rings,<br /> or flirting with me, their safe uncle.</p> <p>They’re trained to hand over the money<br /> and keep smiling, though guns have gone off<br /> from the trigger fingers of nervous men<br /> who never thought they’d be reduced<br /> to doing this to get by.</p> <p>Copyright 2018 Robert Cooperman</p> <h3>Taking Beth to the Denver Nuggets Game Against<br /> the World Champion Golden State Warriors</h3> <p>Over breakfast at our favorite greasy spoon<br /> the next morning, Beth informs me I missed the action,<br /> by paying too much attention to Steph Curry<br /> sinking treys like dropping sugar cubes into coffee,</p> <p>and dribbling through the Nuggets defense<br /> with the speed of a husky with a bowlful of Purina.<br /> The real game, Beth leans closer, to make sure<br /> the scandal doesn’t leak out, was when the wife</p> <p>and small daughter of the guy in front of us<br /> went to the restroom, and his wife’s friend<br /> moved next to him, the woman, according to Beth,<br /> gorgeous, her skin like hot caramel, and abundant</p> <p>under the halter top she wore in this fall cold snap,<br /> her stylus-sculpted fingers caressing his face,<br /> tattooed, rope-hard arms, and belly, then a quick kiss<br /> from pillow-lips, before she returned to her own seat,</p> <p>the guy staring as if Adam’s last glimpse of Eden.<br /> “See what you missed,” Beth taunts now, as I slice<br /> into my French toast, and swish it through syrup.<br /> “Besides, the Nuggets lost again, not even close.”</p> <p>Copyright 2018 Robert Cooperman</p> <p>First published in <em>Waterways</em></p> <h3>Rock Climbers at Garden of the Gods, Colorado</h3> <p>“I love work,” the old joke goes,<br /> can watch guys do it for hours.”</p> <p>No joke, I love to watch rock climbers,<br /> their slow, steady patience of ibexes<br /> that would drive most guys nuts,<br /> who jones on the speed of basketball,<br /> soccer, football, or hockey.</p> <p>It’s the climbers’ competence,<br /> the challenge of figuring out<br /> where to secure a piton,<br /> what fissure to grab hold of,<br /> where to plant their climbing shoes,<br /> or like that world-class Frenchwoman,<br /> ascending barefoot, her toes more agile<br /> than the hands of great tennis players.</p> <p>Then there was the time Beth and I<br /> were walking in The Garden of the Gods,<br /> once a <a href="/search/google/ute"><strong>Ute</strong></a> holy place, now a state park,<br /> its sandstone formations irresistible<br /> as Swiss chocolate to rock climbers.</p> <p>While our necks were craned—hungry<br /> as owlets for the regurgitated meat—<br /> one climber fell, his rope bracing him,<br /> thank goodness, and not the splattered mess<br /> below that we feared, turned away from,<br /> while other observers screamed,<br /> and someone ran for a park ranger,</p> <p>before the climber spidered back<br /> to the wall and signaled, to cheers,<br /> he was ready to continue, though Beth and I<br /> had had enough for one day.&nbsp;</p> <p>Copyright 2018 Robert Cooperman</p> <p>First published in <em>Aethlon</em> magazine</p> <h3>The Kid with the Camera</h3> <p>Crossing the street<br /> with his elementary school class<br /> after a visit to the Botanical Gardens,<br /> he snaps at everything with the confidence<br /> of a smart, loved child: the street signs,<br /> the parking garage tunnel, and me,<br /> waiting for the light to change.</p> <p>It hits me like a giant salami<br /> in a vaudeville slapstick routine,<br /> this could be the opening scene<br /> of a mystery: the kid taking a photo<br /> of something, someone that should’ve remained,<br /> for the sake of his health, invisible.</p> <p>The bad guys track him down, rip the film<br /> from the camera, or smash it to pieces,<br /> and if the kid protests, I don’t even want<br /> to think what they’ll do to him.</p> <p>But maybe if they take him prisoner,<br /> the diminutive genius will make their lives hell.&nbsp;<br /> Or if it isn’t played for laughs, something<br /> terrible will be done to him, unless the cops&nbsp;<br /> or an intrepid rescuer frees him<br /> and wreaks terrible vengeance.</p> <p>All this flies through my head<br /> while the kid snaps me again and smiles<br /> that knowing smile that asserts<br /> the world belongs to him; and it does.</p> <p>Me?&nbsp; I’m almost finished with the space<br /> and oxygen he’ll need for the rest<br /> of his wonderful life, until—and he doesn’t<br /> know this yet—it’s his turn.</p> <p>Copyright 2018 Robert Cooperman</p> <p>First published in <em>Plainsongs</em> magazine</p> <h3>Mobbing the Hawk</h3> <p>“Mobbing,” it’s called, when crows<br /> attack a raptor in a tree or in flight.</p> <p>They scream off-key, as only crows can,<br /> to chase off the predator: blood memory</p> <p>strong as carrion scent, to recall their young<br /> or mates taken, bones clattering down.&nbsp;</p> <p>In the park this glorious Sunday morning,<br /> I spot a red-tail hawk in a tree, trying</p> <p>to make itself invisible from the murder<br /> of crows that would love to kill this beauty,</p> <p>its feathers marbled like opulent Renaissance<br /> tables treaties were signed on.&nbsp; But no peace</p> <p>treaty will be offered this morning,<br /> between raptor and outraged crows</p> <p>that keep up their racket until the great bird&nbsp;<br /> flaps its wings once and flies across the lake,</p> <p>crows giving chase, screaming, shrieking,<br /> making sure it won’t return, as much as we,</p> <p>earthbound humans, would love to see it<br /> snatch and silence an obstreperous crow,</p> <p>not nearly as lovely as this hawk;<br /> thus, in our murderous-aesthete eyes,</p> <p>undeserving of our worship.</p> <p>Copyright 2018 Robert Cooperman</p> <p>First published in <em>US. 1 Worksheets</em> magazine</p> <h3>“Learn English Here”<br /> Sign outside the Coram Deo Reform Church--Denver</h3> <p>“Learn English here,” the sign encourages,<br /> in all good will: Denver a city lyrical<br /> with Spanish, Vietnamese, a splattering—<br /> as if a brief spring sun shower—of French<br /> at one croissant bakery, on Saturdays,<br /> a smattering of Russian, Hebrew, Arabic.</p> <p>Still, English is necessary: to ask directions,<br /> to read cereal boxes, street signs, addresses,<br /> to fill out forms, and to avoid the thousand<br /> little mousetraps in this all-American city.</p> <p>But the sign’s in English, and presumes<br /> a non-native speaker will understand,<br /> and therefore not even need the lessons,</p> <p>though in this case, “English” could mean,<br /> “Only English spoken here,” “Or Speak<br /> English or Go Home,” if one assumes—<br /> and why not, without the proper words<br /> to deny the assertion—that whoever hung<br /> the sign bears no love for foreigners,<br /> and assumes all of them are illegal aliens.</p> <p>How hard would it have been to print,<br /> “Aprenda Ingles Aqui”? since someone<br /> in the church is going to teach English,<br /> and someone who wants to learn<br /> our most irregular tongue will thus<br /> know to walk inside, eager to sign up.</p> <p>Copyright 2018 Robert Cooperman</p> <p>First published in <em>The Chiron Review</em></p> <h3>Tailgating</h3> <p>The driver of the torpedo-sleek<br /> sports car behind me has clamped down<br /> on my rear fender so tight<br /> I can see rage bristling his face<br /> like a wounded boar: not caring<br /> I’m five miles over the speed limit.&nbsp;</p> <p>He’s waving a fist, punching the horn<br /> like a cattle prod: a semi blocks his path,<br /> or he’d have passed me blocks ago.</p> <p>When I turn into the parking lot<br /> of a department store, he follows, still<br /> so close he could suck fumes from my tailpipe,<br /> and, I hope, asphyxiate behind the wheel.</p> <p>But instead of the raging, muscle-crazed<br /> steroid tiger I expected to have to run from,<br /> he’s metamorphosed into an old man,<br /> arms stringy as deflated birthday balloons.</p> <p>“Why can’t you move your ass, damnit!”<br /> he rasps, and I fear he’ll swing so hard<br /> the wind from his haymaker will knock<br /> him down, and he’ll stroke out on the asphalt.</p> <p>The young impatient?&nbsp; It’s their grandfathers:<br /> so many places to go, things still to see,<br /> and so very, very little time.&nbsp;</p> <p>Copyright 2018 Robert Cooperman</p> <p>First published in <em>South Carolina Review</em></p> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-keyword--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--field-keyword.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--field-keyword.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-keyword field--type-entity-reference field--label-above" id="id-field-keyword"> <div class="field__label" id="id-field-keyword">Keywords</div> <div class='field__items'> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/science" hreflang="en">science</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/biology" hreflang="en">Biology</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/art" hreflang="en">Art</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/sculpture" hreflang="en">Sculpture</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/denver" hreflang="en">Denver</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/mountain-lion" hreflang="en">mountain lion</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a 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class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/environmental-science" hreflang="en">Environmental Science</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/civicspolitics" hreflang="en">Civics/Politics</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/sociology" hreflang="en">Sociology</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/immigrants" hreflang="en">immigrants</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/immigration" hreflang="en">immigration</a></div> </div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'links__node' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * links--node.html.twig x links--inline.html.twig * links--node.html.twig * links.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/navigation/links--inline.html.twig' --> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/navigation/links--inline.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-additional-information-htm--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--field-additional-information-htm.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--field-additional-information-htm.html.twig * field--text-long.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-additional-information-htm field--type-text-long field--label-above" id="id-field-additional-information-htm"> <div class="field__label" id="id-field-additional-information-htm">Additional Information</div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-additional-information-htm"><p><a href="https://coloradopoetscenter.org/poets/cooperman_robert/">Colorado Poets Center: Robert Cooperman</a></p> </div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> Wed, 26 Sep 2018 14:24:41 +0000 admin 2963 at http://coloradoencyclopedia.org Peter Anderson http://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/peter-anderson <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--title--encyclopedia-article.html.twig x field--node--title.html.twig * field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--title.html.twig * field--string.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">Peter Anderson</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--uid--encyclopedia-article.html.twig x field--node--uid.html.twig * field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--uid.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--uid.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'username' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/user/username.html.twig' --> <span lang="" about="/users/greg-vogl" typeof="schema:Person" property="schema:name" datatype="">admin</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/user/username.html.twig' --> </span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--uid.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--created--encyclopedia-article.html.twig x field--node--created.html.twig * field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--created.html.twig * field--created.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--created.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'time' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/time.html.twig' --> <time datetime="2018-09-25T16:28:00-06:00" title="Tuesday, September 25, 2018 - 16:28" class="datetime">Tue, 09/25/2018 - 16:28</time> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/time.html.twig' --> </span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--created.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'addtoany_standard' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * addtoany-standard--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * addtoany-standard--node.html.twig x addtoany-standard.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/addtoany/templates/addtoany-standard.html.twig' --> <span class="a2a_kit a2a_kit_size_32 addtoany_list" data-a2a-url="http://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/peter-anderson" data-a2a-title="Peter Anderson"><a class="a2a_dd addtoany_share" href="https://www.addtoany.com/share#url=http%3A%2F%2Fcoloradoencyclopedia.org%2Farticle%2Fpeter-anderson&amp;title=Peter%20Anderson"></a><a class="a2a_button_facebook"></a><a class="a2a_button_twitter"></a><a class="a2a_button_email"></a></span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/addtoany/templates/addtoany-standard.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--body--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--body.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--body.html.twig * field--text-with-summary.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item" id="id-body"><p style="width: 100%; text-align: center;"><img alt="Poet: Peter Anderson" src="/sites/default/files/Peter_Anderson.jpg" style="width: 600px; height: 450px;" /></p>&#13; &#13; <p>Peter Anderson’s most recent books include <em>Heading Home: Field Notes </em>(Conundrum Press, 2017), a collection of flash prose and prose poems exploring rural life and the modern day eccentricities of the American West; <em>Going Down Grand: Poems from the Canyon</em> (Lithic Press, 2015), an anthology of Grand Canyon poems edited with Rick Kempa, which was nominated for a Colorado Book Award; and <em>First Church of the Higher Elevations</em> (Conundrum Press, 2015), a collection of essays on wildness, mountain places, and the life of the spirit. Peter taught writing at Adams State University for ten years. He lives in Crestone, Colorado.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Poems</h2>&#13; &#13; <h3>Black Ice</h3>&#13; &#13; <p>This mountain lake lives in shadow. The sun is a rounder… stays away longer each night, lays low behind the ridge during the day. The winds come down off the mountain, sweeping skiffs of snow across the ice. A father pulls on his skates, so much easier now with plastic and Velcro than it once was with leather and lace. He tests the freeze, first around the edges—a few feet thick—then out in the middle—clear and so deep, he can’t tell where the ice leaves off and the black water begins. He skates as fast as he can, grateful this sprint is his own—no whistles, no coach. He slides one blade in front of the other, leans into a wide rink turn, and carves two thin white lines that follow him out to the edge of the lake where his daughter, still wobbly in her new pink skates, glides toward him. He takes her hands in his and skates backwards, looking over his shoulder for stones frozen in the ice, then back at his daughter who, steady now, sees only what lies ahead.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Copyright 2017 Peter Anderson</p>&#13; &#13; <p>This prose poem appears in <em>Heading Home: Field Notes</em> (Bower House Books)</p>&#13; &#13; <h3>Leaving St. Elmo</h3>&#13; &#13; <p>One-room cabin in an abandoned false-front town, the <strong>Divide</strong> off to the west, mountains honeycombed with all the old diggings. One winter, the only resident, I read old newsprint, learned to see <a href="/article/st-elmo"><strong>St. Elmo</strong></a> the way it once was—smelter smoke narrow-gauge high-grade dreams, before the paper dollar wrecked the gold and silver market and the railroad pulled out. My place, the only light for miles, threw its rays out toward the Milky Way. Woodstove, sleeping bag on the floor, cans of Del Monte Fruit, Campbell’s Soup, Maxwell House Coffee, mice snapping traps in the cup- board. Outside, night winds blew prospecting ghosts down the mountain. If the lower elevations called me now and then, it was only until the nightmares came: visions of après ski tights and fur jackets wandering the newly fern-barred streets of this ghost town turned resort, or worse, the old cabin surrounded by an invasion of doublewides, riding the wave of some meth-headed oil and gas boom. When the mine at Climax shut down, it was the bust that finally got to me—storefronts boarded up from Leadville to Salida, down-valley friends leaving the country, nights darker than the shafts inside the mountain above town. The two-lane that ran south by southwest over Poncha Pass and Wolf Creek slid down the switchbacks on the sunset side promising brighter lights . . . <em>Durango, Durango </em>. . . and possibility. So I folded up the map of home I’d made and it was adiós old shack, adiós old town, and hello to a road I couldn’t help but ride.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Copyright 2017 Peter Anderson</p>&#13; &#13; <p>This prose poem appears in <em>Heading Home: Field Notes</em> (Bower House Books)</p>&#13; &#13; <h3>Querencia</h3>&#13; &#13; <p>Is the space where we are most at home. The sound of the word takes me to water,<br />&#13; to the river maybe, the nose of a kayak in the heart of a wave, as it spills over a ledge<br />&#13; curls back upstream, crests and falls again crests and falls again and holds the boat<br />&#13; in place, as long as I dip paddle and rudder, keeping to the sweet spot, where the up<br />&#13; and down currents meet, where there is stillness in motion, where I am held letting<br />&#13; the sun slivered water slide by on the glassy edge of a hole in the river. Dwell as water<br />&#13; on water, blood on blood, surf the heart of it all. You are here, says querencia…in this<br />&#13; body, on this river, you are here.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Copyright 2017 Peter Anderson</p>&#13; &#13; <p>This prose poem appears in <em>Heading Home: Field Notes</em> (Bower House Books)</p>&#13; &#13; <h3>Where I Am</h3>&#13; &#13; <p>I could tell you to turn east onto the county road just south of <strong>Moffat</strong>.<br />&#13; I could give you a street address and a phone number. I could tell you<br />&#13; we are the last house on the left before you hit Crestone creek.<br />&#13; I might suggest that you look for the vultures circling in the end-of-day<br />&#13; sky just west of the <strong>Sangre de Cristos</strong>. Maybe I’ll be there.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>But a part of me stays further south beyond the trailhead where<br />&#13; the Refuge begins. Check the creekbed that threads out into the<br />&#13; valley. Look for a western tanager perched on a cottonwood branch,<br />&#13; or a mountain bluebird that carries the sky across a hidden meadow,<br />&#13; where there is always a pool of dappled light, where it is so quiet<br />&#13; you can hear the dead sing.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Here the wind has scoured out the sand, except for a ridge <br />&#13; held in place by two old Ponderosas, down which a mothering elk<br />&#13; and her two calves descend at dusk for a drink from the creek. <br />&#13; Later, the stars ride by overhead—Cygnus, Delphinus, Aquila.<br />&#13; Even they are transient.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>I listen for whatever it is that stays.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Copyright 2017 Peter Anderson</p>&#13; &#13; <p>This prose poem appears in <em>Heading Home: Field Notes </em>(Bower House Books)</p>&#13; &#13; <h3>Deep Calls to Deep</h3>&#13; &#13; <p>End-of-day drive west of <strong>Gunnison</strong>, a perfect round sun behind the sky’s memory of wind and sand. See the truck, small as a toy out at peninsula’s end, and farther out, the man, only a dark speck at the far edge of lake-rim thaw. Has he heard how the ice broke up yesterday and stranded two fishermen from <a href="/article/denver"><strong>Denver</strong></a>? Does he listen now for the first hint of fracture, or is he lost in the depths where his silver spinner flickers past the big browns so lean and slow this time of year? Maybe it will draw them from their torpor, they will give chase, and he will feel again the pulse he cannot see, which passes as fast as his own, just enough to invite another cast, and another, into the last light … this man out fishing on the edge of the ice.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Copyright 2017 Peter Anderson</p>&#13; &#13; <p>This prose poem appears in <em>Heading Home: Field Notes</em> (Bower House Books)</p>&#13; &#13; <h3>True News from a Small Town Beat</h3>&#13; &#13; <p>“Give me all the money in your cash register,” he said.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>“Are you serious?” asked the night-shift clerk.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>“Yes,” the old man said.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>“Who do you think you are?”</p>&#13; &#13; <p>“Well, I never done <em>this </em>before . . . how much you got in your register, anyway?”</p>&#13; &#13; <p>“Not much,” she said.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>“Could you give me twenty dollars?”</p>&#13; &#13; <p>“No, I can’t.”</p>&#13; &#13; <p>“Howbout five?”</p>&#13; &#13; <p>“No.”</p>&#13; &#13; <p>“Well, howbout a pack of smokes?”</p>&#13; &#13; <p>“I’ll give you a couple,” she said.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>“Bless you,” he said.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>“He was desperate,” she would say later on.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Police are investigating.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Copyright 2017 Peter Anderson</p>&#13; &#13; <p>This prose poem appears in <em>Heading Home: Field Notes</em> (Bower House Books)</p>&#13; &#13; <h3>Bats</h3>&#13; &#13; <p>You look down into the shaft of an abandoned iron mine, a dark mountain portal into a deep cavern. Your vision takes you only partway to the source of a slight breeze. Waiting for the bats is like dwelling in the borderlands between waking and sleeping. How long, how long? Then a deep stirring and the early thread of the dream appears. Only a few bats, thousands more will follow, riding this mountain tide into a world where you are a stranger. You know they listen to echoes that you can’t hear. You admire their pirouettes as they emerge. Here, in the foothill twilight, what matters is the way they rise into a vast, whirling column. What matters is the breeze and the sound, like moving water, they leave in their wake. What matters is this great river of wings that ends as it begins. In darkness. Now you know where the night comes from.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Copyright 2017 Peter Anderson</p>&#13; &#13; <p>This prose poem appears in <em>Heading Home: Field Notes</em> (Bower House Books)</p>&#13; &#13; <h3>Fireflies</h3>&#13; &#13; <p>I learned a long time ago that your light wouldn’t last till morning. I know now that your scientific name is <em>Lampyridae</em>, that the organ on your abdomen secretes your light, that you flicker for mates, sometimes for prey, that some of you eat only pollens and nectars, that some of you follow slime trails left by slugs which you eat with your long, grooved mandibles, that you must avoid frogs who gorge on you till they glow, that sometimes, say in the Great Smoky Mountains or in the jungles of Malaysia, you gather in great swarms and flash your lights in sync.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>          We have satellites that sweep across the sky—in sync with a super clock in Boulder, accurate to a millionth of a second—which help us aim our missiles. And we have many earthbound lights … lit cigarettes trailing home from the bars at closing time, pickups throwing their high beams down dark county roads, the flicker of prairie towns seen from airplane windows.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>          We are here, they all say. And you’re on your own, the night says back.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Copyright 2017 Peter Anderson</p>&#13; &#13; <p>This prose poem appears in <em>Heading Home: Field Notes</em> (Bower House Books)</p>&#13; &#13; <h3>Barbies in the Backcountry (South San Juans)</h3>&#13; &#13; <p>The first time I notice the Barbies we are a mile in from the trailhead. I see them strapped to my youngest daughter’s pack as if taken hostage. The Barbies could care less that the load we have carefully packed onto our four-legged porter, a burro named Sabina, is listing to the left and about to flop over. One of the Barbies looks at me, pouty, sassy—<em>Oh, you’re, like, so incompetent</em>—as I try to shift the load back into place.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>When the Barbies make their next appearance, I am secretly happy they have been liberated from my daughter’s pack, stripped naked, and set afloat in a very cold mountain stream. The Barbies ride the current, their long, slinky legs goose-bumping off creek-bed cobbles and their carefully coiffed hair trailing like algae behind them. <em>Get me … like … out of here</em>.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>How strange this must be for the Barbies … to be without their closets full of Barbie clothes, without their pink Corvettes and mini cell phones, hundreds of miles from the nearest mall, headed into a long night with a cold bivouac ahead of them. As if their creek immersion weren’t enough, they are now perched in a remnant snowbank near our high-altitude camp, legs akimbo in exotic yoga positions. <em>Hellowwwwwww </em>…<em> we’re Barbies not G.I. Joes! </em></p>&#13; &#13; <p>Poor Barbies. They are now huddled together in a large woolen mitten, having weathered the night dressed only in pink evening gowns. <em>We didn’t … like … sign up for this</em>. And yet they are smiling in the morning sun, as if maybe they are proud of their new survival skills.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>I am glad that my daughters set the terms when the Barbies come to play, and not the other way around.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Copyright 2017 Peter Anderson</p>&#13; &#13; <p>This prose poem appears in <em>Heading Home: Field Notes</em> (Bower House Books)</p>&#13; &#13; <h3>Riding the Tongue</h3>&#13; &#13; <p>I heard about it all on the way to the river. You had taken a pass on all the gadgets that might win you a few more days to breathe. In your own voiceless way, you told them to keep it real and take you home.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>That night, while the summer meteors flashed across the Milky Way, I held you in a prayer, without purpose or destination per- haps, other than the moment it made. Clear. Your eyes. Deep like the trout-finning pools in the river below camp.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Next morning, I forgot about you. It was the light playing on the water. You know how it is. You paddle through it, mesmerized by the shimmer of it all, riding its shine like dragonflies delirious in their coupling flight.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>We camped above the big rapid that night, the one we feared the most. I was listening to the crickets—those that drone and those that chant—when a screech owl flew out of its own silhouette and took its shadow downstream.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>By then you were at home, maybe in a bed beside the window, looking out on the mountain whose thermals you knew well. Below our camp, the owl perched above that glassy slant of water at the top of the rapid—the tongue that always says “over here”—and the current that would glide us, come morning, beyond the ledge where the river disappears.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Copyright 2017 Peter Anderson</p>&#13; &#13; <p>This prose poem appears in <em>Heading Home: Field Notes</em> (Bower House Books)</p>&#13; </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-keyword--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--field-keyword.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--field-keyword.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-keyword field--type-entity-reference field--label-above" id="id-field-keyword"> <div class="field__label" id="id-field-keyword">Keywords</div> <div class='field__items'> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/language-arts" hreflang="en">Language Arts</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/psychology" hreflang="en">Psychology</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/crestone" hreflang="en">crestone</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/social-studies" hreflang="en">Social Studies</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/colorado-history" hreflang="en">colorado history</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/geography" hreflang="en">Geography</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/sociology" hreflang="en">Sociology</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/biology" hreflang="en">Biology</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/science" hreflang="en">science</a></div> </div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'links__node' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * links--node.html.twig x links--inline.html.twig * links--node.html.twig * links.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/navigation/links--inline.html.twig' --> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/navigation/links--inline.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-additional-information-htm--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--field-additional-information-htm.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--field-additional-information-htm.html.twig * field--text-long.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-additional-information-htm field--type-text-long field--label-above" id="id-field-additional-information-htm"> <div class="field__label" id="id-field-additional-information-htm">Additional Information</div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-additional-information-htm"><p><a href="http://panderson.ag-sites.net//">http://panderson.ag-sites.net//</a></p>&#13; &#13; <p><a href="https://coloradopoetscenter.org/poets/anderson_peter/">Colorado Poets Center: Peter Anderson</a></p>&#13; </div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> Tue, 25 Sep 2018 22:28:00 +0000 admin 2962 at http://coloradoencyclopedia.org Kierstin Bridger http://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/kierstin-bridger <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--title--encyclopedia-article.html.twig x field--node--title.html.twig * field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--title.html.twig * field--string.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">Kierstin Bridger</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--uid--encyclopedia-article.html.twig x field--node--uid.html.twig * field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--uid.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--uid.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'username' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/user/username.html.twig' --> <span lang="" about="/users/greg-vogl" typeof="schema:Person" property="schema:name" datatype="">admin</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/user/username.html.twig' --> </span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--uid.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--created--encyclopedia-article.html.twig x field--node--created.html.twig * field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--created.html.twig * field--created.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--created.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'time' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/time.html.twig' --> <time datetime="2018-09-25T10:27:34-06:00" title="Tuesday, September 25, 2018 - 10:27" class="datetime">Tue, 09/25/2018 - 10:27</time> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/time.html.twig' --> </span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--created.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'addtoany_standard' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * addtoany-standard--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * addtoany-standard--node.html.twig x addtoany-standard.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/addtoany/templates/addtoany-standard.html.twig' --> <span class="a2a_kit a2a_kit_size_32 addtoany_list" data-a2a-url="http://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/kierstin-bridger" data-a2a-title="Kierstin Bridger"><a class="a2a_dd addtoany_share" href="https://www.addtoany.com/share#url=http%3A%2F%2Fcoloradoencyclopedia.org%2Farticle%2Fkierstin-bridger&amp;title=Kierstin%20Bridger"></a><a class="a2a_button_facebook"></a><a class="a2a_button_twitter"></a><a class="a2a_button_email"></a></span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/addtoany/templates/addtoany-standard.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--body--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--body.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--body.html.twig * field--text-with-summary.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item" id="id-body"><p style="width: 100%; text-align: center;"><img alt="Kierstin Bridger" src="/sites/default/files/images/poets/Kiersten-Bridger.jpg" style="width: 341px; height: 360px;" /></p>&#13; &#13; <p>Kierstin Bridger is a Colorado writer who divides her time between Ridgway and <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/telluride"><strong>Telluride</strong></a>. She is author of two books: Women Writing the West's 2017 WILLA Award-winning <em>Demimonde</em> (Lithic Press) and <em>All Ember</em> (Urban Farmhouse Press). She is a winner of the Mark Fischer Poetry Prize<em>,</em> the 2015 ACC Writer’s Studio award, a silver Charter Oak Best Historical Award. Bridger was short-listed for the Manchester Poetry Competition in the UK. She is editor of <em>Ridgway Alley Poems</em> and Co-Director of Open Bard Poetry Series. She earned her MFA at Pacific University.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Poems</h2>&#13; &#13; <h3>Mining Town</h3>&#13; &#13; <p>Lightning breaks open the heart of the wood<br />&#13;           every manner of seed takes root <br />&#13; whether by swallow or scavenge,<br />&#13;           by hawk or by hoard. </p>&#13; &#13; <p>This is what it feels like to be haunted<br />&#13; by the carved bars, vaults, and walls of this town. </p>&#13; &#13; <p>In the attic, over our heads, a heaving chest<br />&#13; breathes-in fine dust like powder.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>It’s almost imperceptible this slow drag,<br />&#13; curling photographs of the sporting life,</p>&#13; &#13; <p>tokens unspent, brittle lace gone to moth<br />&#13; fodder and waste. A town bought on backs.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Museum portraits catch my eye as I walk,<br />&#13; their milky violet bottles, child-sized shoes,</p>&#13; &#13; <p>and in the alleys, colt shells unearth<br />&#13; under most any cloud-kick of dirt.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Stepping out into the wild, the river talks too.<br />&#13; They were too young to be forgotten,</p>&#13; &#13; <p>pine-hearted sirens, rustler husbands<br />&#13; banking on their brides, runaway maids</p>&#13; &#13; <p>farming their babies to the retired, “one night wives,”<br />&#13; women hobbled by the work, olden and hidden.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>so many mine smudged doves—<br />&#13; broken-winged birds waylaid by the boom.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Copyright 2018 Kierstin Bridger</p>&#13; &#13; <h3>Alley Flowers</h3>&#13; &#13; <p>Gunshot holes through hollyhock leaves<br />&#13; broke my reverie,<br />&#13; broke it long enough to remember<br />&#13; the moon is not my mother<br />&#13; and my husband is never coming back—<br />&#13; the mine swallowed him whole, grubstake and all.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>His pickaxe is not beneath the floorboards<br />&#13; though I sometimes pretend that it is,<br />&#13; imagine I can wield it when sour breath<br />&#13; and stubble-scrape turn to blades.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>One year all the men loved us,<br />&#13; fought to escort any woman under thirty—<br />&#13; negotiable virtue or not,<br />&#13; but we are now marked not the marrying kind.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>I remember the lupine flags of early summer,<br />&#13; the night before I entered this vulgar house,<br />&#13; the sweet dandelion greens I had for supper,<br />&#13; the hot, salty bacon wilting them thin and dark.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>I think of the hand-fed fawn at camp<br />&#13; when I pamper this stray amber-eyed tabby,<br />&#13; a gift I found under bullet-pocked leaves.<br />&#13; The gunpowder’s scorched scent takes me back.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Copyright 2018 Kierstin Bridger</p>&#13; &#13; <h3>Preparing to Sink</h3>&#13; &#13; <p>Black eyed peas in the bowl—<br />&#13; hard as sea stones in rinse water<br />&#13; tender by tonight, toothsome.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>White beads bit by black.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>This is the way back to my body—<br />&#13; all my hunger tempered by claw<br />&#13; and churn. I dip my hand in </p>&#13; &#13; <p>over and over.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>The slip of water, <br />&#13; the plunge and sift,<br />&#13; a quiet tide of sustenance</p>&#13; &#13; <p>against the yellow enamel.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>So much waiting <br />&#13; until I remember the chores <br />&#13; of all the women who came before me: </p>&#13; &#13; <p>kinfolk who bathed the dead. </p>&#13; &#13; <p>It takes patience to come to this<br />&#13; reckoning. Though we may pay <br />&#13; a mortician to prepare the wrecked limbs </p>&#13; &#13; <p>of my brother, my gape-mouthed brother—</p>&#13; &#13; <p>inject chemicals he did not<br />&#13; barter or buy, flood his dark cavities <br />&#13; once pink with life, </p>&#13; &#13; <p>we will only wring our hands</p>&#13; &#13; <p>in prescribed grief<br />&#13; and glimpse quick<br />&#13; his purple flesh in some oak box. </p>&#13; &#13; <p>I must remember he is beloved.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>I must remember standing in the kitchen<br />&#13; when he was still slighter than me,<br />&#13; our fingers puckered and waterlogged,</p>&#13; &#13; <p>drenched in the debris of our last dinner,</p>&#13; &#13; <p>plates clink under a steam-blurred moon.<br />&#13; Two chattering fools trying to get through—<br />&#13; tasked with the same job </p>&#13; &#13; <p>elbow to elbow, hip to hip,</p>&#13; &#13; <p>dipping bottle brush and holey cloth, <br />&#13; scrubbing away what remains--<br />&#13; not all we've taken in</p>&#13; &#13; <p>but all we have refused.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Copyright 2018 Kierstin Bridger</p>&#13; &#13; <h3>Blinded Soldier and His Molly<br />&#13; Briar Cliff Manor, New York 1919</h3>&#13; &#13; <p>I wasn’t used to learning, didn’t want to grow.<br />&#13; I was making strange companions with the dark<br />&#13; when I heard a familiar accent, the Missouri voice<br />&#13; of my youth. She began to read me Twain’s stories,<br />&#13; tales of Tom Sawyer and Becky, lessons of a white<br />&#13; washed fence, and cranky aunt Polly.<br />&#13; With every word<br />&#13; she began repotting my curiosity.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>She’d bring me crisp apples she’d plucked<br />&#13; from the orchard and slice them thick, tell me<br />&#13; about the carving blade her pappy once had. I waited<br />&#13; for her clean scent, the faint trail of rosewater perfume.</p>&#13; &#13; <p><strong>Mrs. J. J.  Brown</strong> was absent during the morning shift<br />&#13; when I’d be shaved and have my dressings changed.<br />&#13; At her urging I began learning the Braille dots, pressing<br />&#13; sore fingers across the page. I yearned to read it back<br />&#13; to her but I stammered like a schoolboy, slow and stupid.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>She once stopped by my bedside<br />&#13; to tell me about her longest night, the cold black ocean,<br />&#13; frozen fingers gripped to the churn of the oar—<br />&#13; Not knowing her Carpathian was waiting<br />&#13; with the arrival of dawn light<br />&#13; she moved her limbs like an automaton<br />&#13; afraid if her motion wasn’t constant she’d freeze.<br />&#13; She told me she was unsinkable still, that I too<br />&#13; would have to rewrite my story—<br />&#13; never mind the drowning<br />&#13; I’d felt each day<br />&#13; when midnight lingered<br />&#13; behind my morning eyes.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Copyright 2018 Kierstin Bridger</p>&#13; &#13; <p><strong>Red Cross</strong></p>&#13; &#13; <p>Stewed tea soaked in cloth<br />&#13; pressed to lips and slowly sucked<br />&#13; I pass the hours perched on my ribs,<br />&#13; stretched out in the warmth of hospital.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>My backside raw, I’m propped slant<br />&#13; wrapped in white and urged to rest.<br />&#13; I dream for the first time in weeks--</p>&#13; &#13; <p style="margin-left:1.0in;">something about crimson stitches</p>&#13; &#13; <p style="margin-left:2.0in;">my sister lit by morning rise, snow…</p>&#13; &#13; <p>            sewing by the window</p>&#13; &#13; <p>the dogwood                                        </p>&#13; &#13; <p style="margin-left:1.5in;">bright against the drifts.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Oh what a lovely wound my Sergeant says<br />&#13; pointing to me, says I’ll be headed home, certainly.<br />&#13; Two days before the trench went black I saw my mate<br />&#13; lay his trigger finger under the rust specked blade of his bayonet.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>I watched him take full breath, smash the rock down,<br />&#13; the arc of ripe gore in focal point. Passed out on the sludge-<br />&#13; mucked duck boards he’d bought his ticket out. “A fine wound,<br />&#13; he booms again “and a Great war indeed,” I counter.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>I watch for the nurse with auburn curls.<br />&#13; She doesn’t know I caught glimpse: her delicate scar,<br />&#13; a burn of intersecting lines she tries to hide<br />&#13; with dark stockings or black dust of coal powder.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>My sister stoned a man who’d tried to catch her</p>&#13; &#13; <p>             compromise her,                      </p>&#13; &#13; <p style="margin-left:2.0in;">mark her with his bloody seed.</p>&#13; &#13; <p style="margin-left:.5in;">            Said she’d asked for it, miserable suffragette.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Lost an eye he did.                               <br />&#13; She works a hospital now too,<br />&#13; wears an emblem, took an oath.<br />&#13; Saves lives men like me only wasted.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Copyright 2018 Kierstin Bridger</p>&#13; &#13; <p>“Red Cross” was a Silver Award winner from The Charter Oak Best Historical 2017 from Alternating Current Press</p>&#13; &#13; <h3>With Feathers<br />&#13; After Emily</h3>&#13; &#13; <p>There at the window, if the light is right,<br />&#13; I can see the dusty silhouette of wingspan on glass.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>So many birds believed this was not sky’s end— this place where<br />&#13; I peer out floor-to-ceiling pane, turn Charlie Parker over again.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>When we built this house, I dreamed of oversized accordion doors<br />&#13; so I could make the living room half sky, half beam and post.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>But here it can snow on the 4th of July. Under soft plaid wool, we sip cocoa<br />&#13; through hummingbird straws, watch the night blast in dahlias of fire.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>We also know how to clear away the dead in a dustbin, know flight​<br />&#13; doesn’t always land in safety, that kept nests in the eaves</p>&#13; &#13; <p>and atop porch lights are harbingers of luck, signs of respect. Myths<br />&#13; are made under covers, salty as worked skin, never told the same way twice.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>My husband, who red-lined the budget on the folding doors, who instead<br />&#13; ordered the largest glass in the warehouse, is up in the clouds now--</p>&#13; &#13; <p>circling low, calling me to come outside and wave. “I’ll tip my wing,” he says.<br />&#13; I bound out the back door, hair in a towel, no pants, arms like blades</p>&#13; &#13; <p>carving a snow angel in the air. This life, this unfettered longing,<br />&#13; so much sweeter than hope. It’s a wonder we can stop looking up and out at all. </p>&#13; &#13; <p>Copyright 2018 Kierstin Bridger</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Nominated for the Pushcart Prize 2017<br />&#13; Winner of The <em>Progenitor Art &amp; Literary Journal</em> at Arapahoe Community College</p>&#13; &#13; <h3>Of Arc</h3>&#13; &#13; <p>Stepping across the threshold<br />&#13; I take a long, smoky pull<br />&#13; from the August dark, <br />&#13; try to memorize dirt and water<br />&#13; all that holds me on this blue orb <br />&#13; every boy I met at midnight <br />&#13; every car I pushed down the road <br />&#13; revved like thunder<br />&#13; leaned into bend and turn<br />&#13; to escape the rearview <br />&#13; bridges snapping<br />&#13; rope and board <br />&#13; peripheral flickers of constellation <br />&#13; bigger than the small grip of control<br />&#13; it took to shut out the lights<br />&#13; lock the door, <br />&#13; secure the privacy settings. <br />&#13; In this brittle haze of nostalgia <br />&#13; I remember another mad man is in charge<br />&#13; but this time I have a child asleep <br />&#13; while I secret this drag. <br />&#13; Listen,<br />&#13; my curated walls are enflamed<br />&#13; my zip code could be nuked<br />&#13; just like that it could be gone.<br />&#13; I have to take off my specs--what you do before a fight--<br />&#13; My opponent will blur<br />&#13; the way they did for Artemisia<br />&#13; and for Joan.<br />&#13; This is how to stand like a knight <br />&#13; only a slim blade against the dragon<br />&#13; of this time:<br />&#13; Hold my light <br />&#13; I'll whisper into the legacy of stars<br />&#13; to the wind and crescent moon<br />&#13; handover my glowing ash and lick of flame.<br />&#13; Every uprising takes a curve of trajectory<br />&#13; and a practice run.<br />&#13; Every revolution starts with one woman<br />&#13; turning inward, holding court with herself.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Copyright 2018 Kierstin Bridger</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Winner of the 9th Fortnight Poetry Prize from Eye Wear Publishing UK.</p>&#13; &#13; <h3>You Occupy the Field</h3>&#13; &#13; <p>You with the marked mustache<br />&#13; A tiny forward slash scar</p>&#13; &#13; <p>you with your camera stare like<br />&#13; an aspen eye</p>&#13; &#13; <p>you with your contrarian countenance<br />&#13; squarely set in high gloss portrait</p>&#13; &#13; <p>a Bakken plainsman profile<br />&#13; captured grit in megapixel rudd</p>&#13; &#13; <p>unlike the old west miners,<br />&#13; gaunt with damp and dark un-grinned</p>&#13; &#13; <p>for the turn of the century smoke lens<br />&#13; you the root of all western destiny,</p>&#13; &#13; <p>manifest in hazel glare<br />&#13; rough neck, stubble muzzle,</p>&#13; &#13; <p>chemical dust, oil soaked brim<br />&#13; Oppugn the plight of the jobless?</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Not you sir. You follow the work,<br />&#13; angle the consequence later, smug in the now.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Copyright 2018 Kierstin Bridger</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Appeared first in <em>Occupoetry Poets for Economic Justice</em></p>&#13; &#13; <h3>Boundary Breach</h3>&#13; &#13; <p>Pick up the button hole<br />&#13; or eye of the needle<br />&#13; with hard squint<br />&#13; see inside<br />&#13; salute the high sun<br />&#13; see us lucid but listing<br />&#13; hands open</p>&#13; &#13; <p>I can conjure us<br />&#13; like that dip of oar<br />&#13; the silvered pond<br />&#13; interruption of glass<br />&#13; the canoe—our reflection in mad<br />&#13; Van Gogh dashes—<br />&#13; un-mired by melt<br />&#13; we sit quietly in memory<br />&#13; waiting for an August noon<br />&#13; of yarrow perfume,<br />&#13; sweet sting of thistle<br />&#13; leading us there</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Meanwhile the dirge of March<br />&#13; a snow show pace melting ice,<br />&#13; metal rasping the edges<br />&#13; anxious grass and granitic snow<br />&#13; fish writhing back to life<br />&#13; below the frozen surface<br />&#13; translucent; thin enough<br />&#13; to crack<br />&#13; with a spoon<br />&#13; a thimble<br />&#13; with a tap<br />&#13; without you</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Solace in a half muddy marsh<br />&#13; this hard, narrow focus<br />&#13; as close<br />&#13; as I’ll ever be<br />&#13; to having you back</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Copyright 2018 Kierstin Bridger</p>&#13; </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-keyword--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--field-keyword.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--field-keyword.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-keyword field--type-entity-reference field--label-above" id="id-field-keyword"> <div class="field__label" id="id-field-keyword">Keywords</div> <div class='field__items'> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/social-studies" hreflang="en">Social Studies</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/us-history" hreflang="en">U.S. History</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/colorado-history" hreflang="en">colorado history</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/ridgway" hreflang="en">Ridgway</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/art" hreflang="en">Art</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/language-arts" hreflang="en">Language Arts</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/literature" hreflang="en">Literature</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/writing" hreflang="en">Writing</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/world-history" hreflang="en">World History</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/margret-molly-brown" hreflang="en">Margret “Molly” Brown</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/civicspolitics" hreflang="en">Civics/Politics</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/mass-media" hreflang="en">Mass Media</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/science" hreflang="en">science</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/geology" hreflang="en">geology</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/environmental-science" hreflang="en">Environmental Science</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/painting" hreflang="en">Painting</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/van-gogh" hreflang="en">Van Gogh</a></div> </div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'links__node' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * links--node.html.twig x links--inline.html.twig * links--node.html.twig * links.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/navigation/links--inline.html.twig' --> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/navigation/links--inline.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-additional-information-htm--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--field-additional-information-htm.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--field-additional-information-htm.html.twig * field--text-long.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-additional-information-htm field--type-text-long field--label-above" id="id-field-additional-information-htm"> <div class="field__label" id="id-field-additional-information-htm">Additional Information</div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-additional-information-htm"><p><a href="https://www.kierstinbridger.com/">kierstinbridger.com</a></p>&#13; &#13; <p><a href="https://coloradopoetscenter.org/poets/bridger_kierstin/">Colorado Poets Center: Kierstin Bridger</a></p>&#13; </div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> Tue, 25 Sep 2018 16:27:34 +0000 admin 2960 at http://coloradoencyclopedia.org