Poetry While You Wait
Dark Mischief
The antic shadow of the crow
clowns the crow’s path,
shape-shifting across lawns,
leveling along pavement, scrambling
in swift and comic angles over obstacles.
Manic and mindless,
it speeds its carbon route, shredding
and reuniting seamlessly as the crow
follows his black agenda. Then
it vaults in crazy angles up
the wall, arriving exactly
as the crow arrives, barely in time
to dart under and vanish
at the precise moment that the crow
tucks his wings.
The bird’s unflappable, he perches
in charge of his world.
His shadow has to catch its breath.Lois Beebe Hayna, Pikes Peak Poet Laureate Emeritus, is the author of many books, most recently Keeping Still.
Fruit Salad
Kiwi
Hairy, brown, egg-shaped
Juicy, green, black seeds, squishy
New Zealand surprise.
Apple
Red, green, yellow, mixed
Crisp, juicy, crunchy, sweet, fresh
Pluck it off the tree.Strawberry
Wrapped in small green seeds
Red, juicy, sweet, lush, ground fruit
Throw out the green leaves.Banana
Thick, yellow peel, smooth
Slices of soft, squishy, white
Tropical tree treat.Julia Stark, a fourth-grader at Woodmen-Roberts Elementary, is a Colorado Springs native and the youngest of four children.
Round Lake
One year of my life, I fished Round Lake.
No fish lived in it, but it was still alive.
No one else fished it; it was reputed dead.
No one had faith but me,
And I had none either. I knew
I’d never feel a tug all year.
Each time I’d rent the only rowboat left
from the dying man in the dying shack,and row out slowly to where fish would be,
perch, maybe, along the reed bed edges
where the water looked like amber tea,
and my daredevil swiveledlike a victor’s flag through liberated crowds
of waving, slime-feathered bottom weeds,
and came up empty every time.
There were no fish in that lake.I’d sit on the rowboat’s aft seat,
listen to cicadas grinding in the pines,
watch the midges dance to their tune,
and be alone and glad of it.One time, rowing in, I heard a flop
only a fish could make resound
and Round Lake turned topaz in the sunset,
and that’s all I know about love.Malcolm McCollum has long been a rumor in his own time.
Red Four
I wish I could grab you out of the air
and collect you in my Mason jar.
I would poke holes in the lid and put grass inside
so you’d be OK.
That way I could put you on my dresser
and watch you hover and blink your
glowness on then off then on.
I hate to miss a single flash—
(it’s the flash that defines the dark).You are all so captivating, funny,
confused, conflicted, earnest, ridiculously
beautiful.I won’t pluck you from your intended path,
but instead be content to watch you
from the porch with the satisfying click
of the rocking chair’s rhythm signaling dusk.You are best in the field.
It’s where you
luminesce with the full power of room to wander.Erin Scott lives with her family and dogs near Manitou Springs.
Brandin’ Time at the Triple “T”
It’s brandin’ time once’t agin in the corral at Triple “T”;
The dogies have been cut from the herd after a frantic spree!
Cowboys sweated and cussed in suns reachin’ a hun’ert degrees,
As they flushed ’em out of arroyos and groves of salt pine trees.
It will be a frenzied week or so on the Triple “T” spread;
Even seasoned hands anticipate it with consternation and dread!
A feller could bust some bones, a-gittin’ wild dogies lassoed,
Wrestlin’ them brutes to the ground a-tryin’ to git ’em throwed!In his reliable old cuttin’ hoss the cowpoke has put his trust,
To help bring them wily critters down a-sprawlin’ in the dust!
After much bawlin’ and kickin’, the calf is at last subdued,
And is seared with the Triple “T” brand, forever to be tatooed!The dusty old corral rings with raucous hollers and hoots,
As a cowboy gets kicked and goes sailin’ head over boots!
His calloused hands and nose leave deep furrows in the earth;
He gits up shakin’ his head and a-cussin’ fer all he’s worth!Brandin’ season’s over, now he can return to fixin’ fences,
Herdin’ cattle and savorin’ Colorady’s mountains and expanses.
Ain’t no gittin’ ’round it, brandin’ comes with a cowpoke’s career;
He’ll be back in the corral ropin’ and a-sweatin’ agin next year!Robert L. Hinshaw, CMSGT, USAF, Retired, who began writing at age 72 in 2002, has written nearly 650 poems, most of which have been included in four books, national and international anthologies, and periodicals.
Watering Can
I want to be the little girl
holding the red watering can, planting.
I want to be the mother
holding her hand.
I don’t want to be the protected woman
kept free from her mother’s mistakes.I want to be the little girl planting
the mother holding the hand holding
the watering can.I don’t want to be the partial woman
who has just enough face left in the mirror
to remember what she used to be.I want to be the mother planting
the little girl holding the hand holding
the watering can.And I want to plant with my hands
in the soil, I want my hands to bury
into dark, plantingwhile the hands holding the watering can,
the red watering can, pour forward
their falling stream of light.Laura Stuckey teaches English at The Bijou School in Colorado Springs School District 11 and is currently vice-president of Poetry West.
Waldo Hog Ranch
I was hungry that day.
I owned the livestock, but Mudy Jones owned the valley.
Four canyon walls held in the hogs—I never needed a fence.
A few pigs slid over smooth rocks from a waterfall run dry.
Saw one go over the edge. She didn’t panic soon enough—
started running one way and falling another. I ate her.On the south end, a granite face three hundred feet high
held back the earth to one side and my hogs to the other.
Jones had farmland. He didn’t need my rock piles.
I could never make myself believe that my valley
was only as good as Mudy Jones’ mortgage.Rode three miles down Ute Pass to see the paper
that said he owned my valley. I burned my copy,
then I stopped paying, just so Jones’d challenge me.
“You come down and I’ll show you the mortgage,”
he told me. I came after dinner, no less hungry.Jones pushed the paper at me like some men shovel dirt.
“Read it, Waldo. Then pay.” I pretended to follow
the curves and lines of stain, then crushed it—quick
as you blink awake from a dream—and I started to eat it.
Jones yelled “What in thunder?” like he didn’t know hunger.Took me maybe three minutes to swallow the whole of it.
Jones grabbed a rifle and chased me off his land.
Walked back to my land—people called it Waldo Canyon.
I sat beneath three hundred feet of crumbling red granite,
the mortgage sitting heavy and sweet in my belly.James Gleason Bishop’s work has appeared in North American Review, The Xavier Review, Yankee, Free Lunch, and Christianity and Literature. He teaches English at the Air Force Academy.
All A’s
My heart learned to sit at the desk
and fold its hands, learned not to scratch
bad words into wood, not to shove
kids at recess. My heart began
to hang its coat on its own peg,
to sip milk, slightly warm, through a straw,
to print the answer on the line,
to ascend through reading groups:
Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue.
My heart got all A’s.
A for Alone. A for Always.
Jane Hilberry received the Colorado Book Award for her collection, Body Painting.
Surveillance
It is better to do this alone,
instead of with a partner.
You don’t have the small talk
and you can listen to what you want
on the radio.
The butt of my pistol presses
between the car seat and my ribs.
I am uncomfortable and bored,
waiting for a white van
with Florida plates.Car after car after truck,
buses and tractor-trailers
go by and no white van
with out-of-state plates.
I know so little about my quarry.There will be a rush
if I can get in behind the van.
Very soon we may hurl ourselves,
stranger to stranger,
into violent urban dance,making outrageous assumptions
about each other, right and wrong,
in a matter of seconds in time.
We will instantly know the other,
and we will share our fear.Or I may continue
to listen to the radio,
go back empty-handed.
Later I might dream of flowers
or become a teacher in the fall.Ron Truax is retired from Colorado law enforcement and has been writing poems since junior high school.
Hangman
A Big Chief tablet and a Bic
between us on the car’s back seat,
the scaffold drawn, and underneath
a code of dashes in a row
for seven letters. Part of a stick-
figure fixed to the noose’s O
for every letter missed, until
if I’m not careful my poor guy
will hang with x’s for his eyes.
My brother parlays his resource
for big boy words with taunting skill:
“It starts with d and rhymes with force.”But I don’t know the word, don’t know
the wet world being slapped away
by wiper blades, or why the day
moved like an old stop-action film
or an interrupted TV show
about a family on the lam.I let myself be hanged, and learn
a new word whispered out of fear,
though it will be another year
before I feel the house cut loose,
my dangling body and the burn
of shame enclosing like a noose.David Mason won the Colorado Book Award for his verse novel, Ludlow, and he lives near the Garden of the Gods. This poem was first published in the Times Literary Supplement.
Morning
The grateful rooster
greets another day with joy.
I am still in bed.
Front Range Turbulence
In winter, the sky
over Colorado gets
a washboard effect.
From 35,000 Feet
The creeks write Sanskrit
and I wonder if the Gods
all speak one language.
Karen Sucharski of Manitou Springs is a past winner of the Pikes Peak Arts Council Performance Poet of the Year award. She is the Slammistress for National Poetry Slam in Colorado Springs, and she teaches performance poetry in local schools.
Sonnet to a Watch
Live life each minute; live all day and lose
Not any moment. So will your precise
Hands chart my waking, mark what sleep I use
(For dreams in lieu of living are a vice).
Ah yes, what would be life without you, watch,
My minister of order, judge of time?
Consigned to lateness, ever doomed to botch,
Or freed from your kin’s awful, screeching chime?
It’s not that one ought never know the hour,
And keep the stars at bay with play that’s bought,
But sometimes we resist your constant power
And feel time’s just a problem that you’ve wrought.
Why beat you, timepiece cold and hard and buff,
As though my own heartbeat were not enough?
Sophia Nunez, a senior at Fountain Valley School, loves those timeless moments spent seeking wisdom under a favorite tree.
Chopping Firewood
I love splitting wood on winter days when
air holds my face with cold hands
my mouth breathes out white sky
warm sunlight soothes my bruised bones.
I love splitting wood on winter days
when I roll these barreled stumps
to a certain distance before me,
separate my feet, and dig in my heels.Eyeing the center ring
I raise this ax above my head,
brace it as all the ropes and
wires in my arms and back
wind and coil to strike down
this ax
again and again and again
like a fan blade wild in sunlight
until the pine crackles open
and smells clean enough to bite.With a hand on each half
I open the log and
feel the pine
fly up into my face in flames.Jim Ciletti, an award-winning poet, is proactive in supporting poetry and literary events in the Pikes Peak region.
Entre Blanco y Negro
Tengo una casa
donde se ubican mis libros, mi cepillo, mi café.
No tiene historia ni tampoco verdades a medias.
Solo me tiene a mi.Arriba hay un techo de pinta blanca,
abajo un suelo de losa negra.Entre sí ando yo, descalza
…pies plantados.De las ventanas se ve como
la Noche da luz a la Madrugada.Se quita su cobija de oscuridad
de un sueño profundo.Desde esa vista panorámica
la soledad me desviste a míMe quedo desnuda, desarmada Y dueña,
…mi casa no es tu casa.In Between, White and Black
I have a house
Where you can find my books, my comb, my coffee.
The house has no history but neither does it have any half-truths.
It has only me.Above, the ceiling is painted white
Below, the floor black tileIn between am I, barefoot
...feet pressed firmly.From the windows you can see how the night gives way to dawn
taking off her blanket of darkness,
from a thick deep sleep.In front of that panoramic view
solitude undresses me.I stand naked, disarmed, in charge …my house is not your house.
Annie Robbins is a Spanish and ESL teacher at Pikes Peak Community College and is also an aspiring professional mediator.
You Must
You must roar like the ocean
Or whisper as the grass.
You must blaze like the sun
Or softly reflect as a pool.
You must speak to all
Or only one.
You must sing as the stars
Or cry out as a soul.
You must be stark as stone
Or lush as the rainforest.
You must tiptoe as a deer
Or rage as thunder.
You must speak softly
Or scream.
But you must say something.
Audrey Wall, a senior at Lewis-Palmer High, has won awards for her poetry.
Memories on the Wind
I feel a gentle wind caress my face.
I look up to see the moon and stars.
For a moment I forget this place.
And the fact that I sit in a War.
It brings to mind the mountains of home,
And the winds that blow down from the north.
It is almost like a dream sometimes.
That my memories call forth.
Of another place and a different time.
Next to a mountain river,
With a beauty by my side.
A day of peace, a day of rest.
A day that not soon I shall forget.
Now the sun crosses the horizon’s edge.
And once more my memories fade.
As my mind turns back to this War.
And the start of another day.
Sgt. Kruger Jorden, U.S. Army, wrote this poem following two combat tours in Iraq.
Born on a Fishing Boat
I was born on fishing boat
Lying in basket
Ocean tide rocking me to sleep
Papa fishing all-day and all-night
Mama’s washings hanging on line
Above my head
Misty sea washing my face
Northern wind whispering to my ears
Angel of sea kissing my forehead
Beneath paper moon
My little arms out from the cradle
Out to the breeze
Happy, born on fishing boat
By the sea
Mei-Li Liu was born and raised in Taiwan and lives in Colorado. She is the author and illustrator of Ten Thousand Miles from Home.
Mountains Eclipsed by Evidence
The smallest book that the buffalo wore
contained the flawless spirit of its
gathering of little wounds. The animal
discovered pain while muttering to itself
in miserable perplexity. A division
separated heaven from the presence of the
beast in the scented pasture. This ruinedbusiness of standard grazing had been
replaced by the human agony of conscience.
Only such a clot of laws could make
influence weary, accorded the disrespectfor the quarters of mistaken locality.
The days were filled under the mantle
of the sky, and, to prevent any
change in complacency, seldom did
they express the concord by which
other creatures were grazed through
the doorway of bullets. Signs floated
within the mercy of time and space.Joseph Uphoff’s business card reads, in part, “Theoretical Surrealism / Visual Poetics.”
Colorado Narrow Gauge
I span with a stride
The narrow bands of steel
That stitched together the fabric of a state.
They rot, despite the creosote,
The short sturdy ties
That gentled curves too sharp
And steeps impossible to climb.
In cold cinders
Beside abandoned roadbeds
Columbines nod in the passing of the wind
And in my hand I hold
A relic, a small rusting spike,
And listen to the echo of the years
Down the canyon.Elsie Pope is a retired teacher, professional gardener, and full-time naturalist.
In Praise of Teeth
It’s high time someone said
what we’ve all been thinking.
Teeth
are far superior to silverware;
they get the job done
quicker, and we carry them
whether we want to or not.At lunch today, in the wilderness
of the basement food court, I tried
to saw my chicken burrito in half,
but could not force the plastic knife
through, one-handed, reading my book.
Teeth can do it.
And why bother with plates, and trays,
and napkins? Why must we have
all this paraphernalia,
when all we want to do is eat?And so I sing in praise of teeth.
Next time you’re feeling sorry for yourself,
just think of the hard white rocks
inside your mouth, and rejoice! Nothing
is impossible.Jessy Randall is the Curator of Special Collections at Colorado College. This poem originally appeared in Morpo Review.
Transcendent Road Kill
Neither toward hope,
nor from fear,
but perhaps feeling only
the total joy of being toad,
is why he hopped
that night
up the steep slope,
above the green pond,
onto the long black road,
in the general direction toward sky,
And in his own toady way,
transcended
quotidian
immediacy,
under the glittering stars...
just moments
before the long speeding truck
(wearing the weight of commerce)
printed him
on asphalt!Later that August-hot week,
under the high glaring sun he lay,
a parchment unread,
until one slow driver
as he passed over,
felt an un-writeable poem
Leap!
into his heart!Price D. Strobridge lives and works in the Pikes Peak region. He was honored as the Pikes Peak Art Council Performance Poet of the Year in 2005 and as a Gazette Choice Award winner in 2006.
So I’ve Heard
Cow dung tastes like straw, I’ve heard
with the sun bleached out
soil forgotten and wind rained
I’ve heard blood
will flow uphill during certain yoga poses
Asanas is the right word; keep a tourniquet nearI’ve heard, too, some children will lie
creating maps across their own mountains,
illusion a world of snow and rock and iceCliff faces lift themselves up
some say in starry optimism; others say
they rise to weep cactus and deer, lizards and aspenRumor has it alligators live in New York sewers
Never Paris. Or Philly. Certainly not LA or Rome
Only Manhattan relishes razorsLecia Wood is a writer and editor and a yoga and Pilates instructor.
Gentle Passenger
To no longer wander in names of old books,
This is the taste of going without
In the backyard of evening,
To no longer slam the screen door
In happiness, in nerves
To no longer pull off the pilling
Of sweaters, absently, no longer.
To no longer dream of the green pine cabin
Where a sister once tipped your icewater,
Light broke open the small beds at sunrise
And you’ll find misplaced bracelets no longer.
To no longer desire a voice in the eaves
Or a truce with the past, or a hand,
And no longer the lines that converge and depart
Leaving echoes that billow
Through streets and down and in and apart,
And you visit no longer.
To no longer sleep in a snarl of limbs
With another, to no longer wait,
To no longer imagine the sea in a letter,
The weeks stilled under glass with silencing bells,
No longer birds curling past, on this train
You sway slightly in shadow
And look where you care
To look, no longer.
Nico Alvarado is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and is the husband of the writer Mia Nussbaum.
In the Purple Mountain’s Shadow
In the Purple Mountain’s shadow,
We are as the aspen stands,
Seeming separate silver trunks
Grown up through granite cracks
Yet underneath the sandy soil
Roots of fire entwine
And send the same blaze crown-wards
To gild applauding coin-shaped leaves
In the Purple Mountain’s shadow.
In the Purple Mountain’s shadow,
We are as the glacial lake,
Filled from myriad cascades
Of snowmelt-turned-to-streams
Yet at the Center, coalesced.
A stone, skipped, skims the surface
Creating rippling, widening wakes;
Concentric rings caress, connect
In the Purple Mountain’s shadow.In the Purple Mountain’s shadow,
We are as the thundering herd
Of alpine white-tailed deer,
Each individual, buck and doe,
A separate entity,
Yet flying, flowing, flees en masse
To soughing, sheltering pine
Hooves and hearts pounding as one
In the Purple Mountain’s shadow.Stay-at-home poet Autumn Hall is grateful to live and write in glorious Green Mountain Falls, Colorado, with the love of her life, Gary; her two amazing daughters, Monterey and Denver; and her Australian Shepherd, “Indy.”
July
I am weeping in Colorado
I am weeping by the mountains
I am weeping along the sidewalk after midnight in darkness
I am weeping in the bathroom splashing water on my face
I am weeping staring at my cell phone
I am weeping on the highway of Monument hill
I am weeping in the lightning
I am weeping searching for your porch light by the road
I am weeping by the steps of my college every day
I am weeping over my blackened hands
I am weeping in the dust and wildflowers and drenched heat of Barr Trail
I am weeping in sporadic gobs of rain
I am weeping to the imaginary screaming guitar
I am weeping with sticky fingers of watermelon juice
I am weeping over my phantom mother who watches her heart bleed and
ankle swell unexpectedly, and bursts into tears
I am weeping in Denver my concrete tomb of fluorescence
and paper stench
I am weeping in the smog sunset
I am weeping on barbecue lawn chairs, break room tables, residential
sidewalks, stream-water grass, granite chunks, clean sheets, stepladders
and rattling cars
I am weeping in your arms in Benadryl dreams and even now I wonder
if we are in love
I am weeping and it’s raining oh it’s raining
James Powell is 20 years old and was born and raised and currently lives and works in Colorado Springs.
She Started Going Crazy in Alphabetical Order
She started going crazy in alphabetical order.
First went the apples.
She couldn’t see them as they were.
Misinterpreting fruit became a pastime.
She thought up scientific names to relate.
For art and the strangeness that gradually
became the commonplace. Magnetism.
By the time she got to g, gravity had ceased to be.
And when she got to m, medicine and mallets, metal
and math, mints and molars, mind games and
merry-go-rounds and rounds and round and round,
And oh! The magnolias…they all melted away.
And as she got to s, the self slipped into something else.
And it seemed to send her sideways most days,
and sometimes the whoosh of the wind
would carry her to w.
Where she would wallow over wind chimes, winter
white and Walt Whitman.
And if then she’d find herself at xyz,
she'd find herself to be
without xylophones or yellow zinnias.
And most of all, without you.
When you ceased to be, she was quickly brought back to reality.
For what’s the good in going crazy, if I can’t take you with me?
Cassia Powell writes to be heard.
Schoolyard
I don’t know how many times I drove past
before I saw the old country school house, sitting there
on the corner of nowhere, atop one of the undulating hills
that roll across north-central Kansas,
at the intersection of a country road and
the two-lane black top of Kansas Highway 14,
south of Ellsworth, north of Lyons.
Windswept, I stepped through the tall grasses
unmowed for so many years, wary
for fear a prairie rattler might still lurk,
though the first hard freeze had already come and gone.The slide’s cast-iron steps remained intact,
structurally sound, though I didn’t try my luck,
for the playground favorite had rusted too much
to be slippery anymore, even had it been designed
to accommodate my rear-end.I peered through the window into the classroom
and saw the last teacher’s bulletin board remaining as ever,
her construction paper alphabet faded
by harsh sunlight that broke through the glass.I peeked in the corner by the steps below the old front door,
nervous, lest an errant yellow bus appear in the schoolyard,
safe from the curious eyes of intermittent traffic
on the highway beyond, relieved to be gone,
less than halfway home.Verl Lee Holmes is a local businessman/writer/photographer with a degree in creative writing and a book that needs a publisher.
Prayer for Safe Travel
God bless cars with red cellophane tape over brake lights,
padlocks for trunk locks, different color doors, lumber for bumpers,
windshields zigzag fractals those who outlive lightning wear
everywhere under skin, nearly insignia, tributary maps.Keep them distant from auto impound’s concertina wire,
corkscrewed as cartoon pigs’ tails or paper streamers from explodingparty favors. Leave their drivers untroubled. When we follow
open-frame trucks with several green, missile-size bottlesupright and wobbling, extinguish our cigarettes, dispel all fear
and static electricity. Let us clearly see the diamond-shaped flammablesymbol, its twist of white lines a burning-bush flicker, its number
3 religious, as promise to spare us while climbinghills behind dump trucks of jostling rubble and rebar
or vehicle carriers stacked with those spectacular wrecks.Aaron Anstett has published three collections of poetry and lives in Colorado Springs with his wife, Lesley, and children, Molly, Cooper, and Rachel.
Car Lot—Recession
Rusted Ford truck, manila with sundry pockmarks, a lone, red Corvette; on Sunday’s Sabbath all’s quiet except the creaks of cold air contracting like sighs of stray ghosts of drivers squeezing through loose valves on worn tires.
Hail damage, wreck damage; dirt under the hood, debris in rear floor, stains of spilled lives on gray shreds of once fragrant, new upholstered seats. Spare parts, vintage crests, once-in-fashion shades like olive green; knobs in reverse logic of foreign cultures, going the other instinctive direction like water below the equator.
A few vehicles still game for long-distance trips; others for sitting, parked at empty, soon to be foreclosed drive-ins, watching black-and-white frames of 1930s films of debonair men swirling glamorous women in gowns of vapor and rhinestones.
Fawn Hayes Bell has resided in Colorado Springs since 1984 and is a landscape architect by profession.
Sunday Morning
Thunder snaps at the lake,
the chalice of its shrine
cracked, sloshing a star-cold mist.
The river swells,
huffy with its labors.
Trees sway in the sermon.I follow the white line of surf,
consider diving into, which is also under,
the ash-grey waves.You kissed me yesterday,
your lips like twin snails,
and morning voice rough
as two trunks chafing in a storm.This sky, this azure bell,
will it ever be satisfied?Zachary Redfearne has been published in POEM and Quarterly West, among others.
Branches of Song
The throat of a sparrow unfolds.
Light and gesture collide
and splinter. A meticulous
clutter spills on the air.
The syllable never
quite finishes, just as
you and I collideand complicate each other—
bent double, tangled
and refracted with melisma
as if it were a processionof the blood. A million little
pieces of histories run cold
and sweet through me.Speck of backyard folds
each moment into the next,
the way I try to get every inch
of every iteration of you.One wild thing still comes closer,
hops from branch to naked branch—
its judgment is a mystery cult.Tony Friedhoff is a writing instructor at UCCS.
Ode to Robby the Rooster, Stud of the Open Range
Robby was a rooster, he ran the barnyard hens
He even tried to herd the calves out in the sortin pens.
He strutted like a bantam with a sneer across his beak
A cocky little maverick with long spurs upon his feet.One day he saw the bosses sweet young lady love
as he was settin in the cow barn in the rafters up above.He started into sneaking upon his little chicky toes
creeping ever nearer to that cowgirl down below.He dropped a load of you know what just like a bombardier
he cackled and he crowed a bit a raucous chicken cheer.He terrorized that little gal and then she gave a cry.
She threatened Robby with a curse, “Someday you’re gonna fry!”Ohhhh! Robby got his just rewards, Ohhhh! Robby lost his head,
that little woman got revenge and this is what she said,“There Robby lies, in the frying pan, his choicest pieces all arranged
Fried chicken for my supper, from the stud of the open range.”Donna Hatton, the wife of a Colorado cattle rancher, won the Academy of Western Artists (AWA) Will Rogers Award for Cowboy Poetry CD/Album of the year and has been named an AWA Top Five Lady Cowboy Poet and Western Music Association Top Ten Lady Cowboy Poet.
Bus Stop Haiku #3—MANITOU
Your Friend & Neighbor
plays songs on the radio.
Sunshine, 9 a.m.
Bus Haiku #5—BOULDER
Coffee in one hand,
the boy wears headphones and hums.
Snow melts on his boots.
Bus Stop Haiku #9—CASCADE
Fall leaves gather up
under our feet at the bus
stop bench. We wait.
Bus Haiku #11—PPCC
Almagre Mountain
glows on top of Gold Camp Road.
Aspen leaves shimmy.
Soham Patel lives in Manitou Springs and writes poetry.
From “In the Shadow of Pikes Peak”
1
Snow
on the
distant mountains. Cloudsand
sunlight, sunlight and clouds:I never
learnedhow
to say this world, the wayjoy and
grief move back and forthacross
an empty sky,never tiring
of one another’s company.2
Last night the gray deer stayed clear of me
as I walked
through the snowtoward the road that leads north,
even further
into the mountains.No need to run away
from the man
walking so slowly,head down, afraid he might fall
in the deep
snow. Let’s stay and watch himas he walks. Let’s see
if he looks
up for a glimpseof the moon and its single
trailing
star.3
When the coyotes howl,
I feel
relieved. Another creature
on
this earthtrapped
inside loneliness.Jim Moore’s most recent book of poetry is Lightning at Dinner, published by Graywolf Press in 2005.
Hayman Wildfire Set by Forest Service Worker
That you spotted the fire and the starter
That he drove a gold minivan, a smokescreen obvious as pyrocumulus
covering Pikes Peak
That he lurched into yellow sky to escape, chased across four counties
by those thousands of torches searching for a monster
That you but not yourself ignited the fire
That drought winds and updrafts could waft you away, spreading embers
over river and highway
That hotshot crews with pulaskis clearing firebreaks, sweat baked out,
would clear your name among the mulch and rootbound soilThat a letter from your estranged ex lit the fire
That matchsticks and paper turned arson upside down here to build a
pyre of human fuel
That the campfire ring of rocks fit for your finger crowned no trees, and
its dying to ash lasted less than twenty daysThat a helicopter shuddering above forest stubble can feast on sides
of beef lying barbecued near burned carcasses of barns
That replanted ponderosa pine seedlings can feed on satellite feeds for
twenty yearsThat fire started you
Steven D. Schroeder lived in Colorado Springs for over 20 years. His first full-length book of poems, Torched Verse Ends, was recently published by BlazeVOX.
Catch the Wind
From my airplane window—
clouds ride over the Rockies,
submerged world of mountains
obscured, even the tallest drowned.
My plane swims over mounds of air
to the other side of the world,
buoyed by slow white waves
now flattening at the horizon.I’ve ridden storms,
skimmed the sun,
come out of the sea
at 35,000 feet.It was this way the day you married me
on Catch the Wind Hill,
the rest of the world lost,
clouds lapping at our feetI’m coming home.
Sandra McNew has lived, loved, written and taught in Colorado for years.
Crocus
The crocus stuck their heads up last week,
little baseball mitts of yellow.
So delicate with their papery
petals and petite height (no taller than a jar of baby food)Yet also hardy, these first ones,
the pioneers in the flower world,to brave March’s chill and snow.
I remember planting the bulbs,
acorn-sized nuggets of promise.A fall day of family and low sun
as we dug can-sized holes in the dirtand placed each bulb, just so,
delicately and facing heaven.What nourished them? November
and December with their rough, bare winds?Leaves and needles fell; holiday music faded,
and the wars raged on.Little moisture fell, the earth cracked,
yet the bulbs stirred, the bulbs stirred.And soon the autumnal eggs shot forth runners
Who reached for the light, for the warmth of hope.And now these petals of blue and yellow and red
Brighten even the most somber of March moods.Dave Reynolds teaches English at the Fountain Valley School and enjoys skiing in the woods, hiking, his family, and words.
Into the Sunset
Lone pronghorn becomes
a herd of slender shapes
gliding through fog.
Lamb chops run
free, bleat—romping
through noon-day sun.
Gobbler struts in
creek bed shade. Fans
his tail for the ladies.
Red-tailed hawk on
a fence post, prairie
dog sitting sentinel.
Cool blue sky, cloud
shrouded mountains,
windswept prairie. Cattle
yards, twisted cottonwoods,
dry wash pointing the way.
Magpie chasing across
the highway
while the meadowlark
sings us home.
K.D. Huxman is a children’s writer and poet who loves living in the shadow of Pikes Peak.
Songoing
for Macgregor
the sun. the sun. the sun.
the sun the sun the sun.
To wake with gardenias
behind a veil of hair
everything heldtogether merely by the stewardship
of tiny, voiceless orbits. Or
perhaps there is too much voice?
. the sun. the sun. the sun.
the sun the sun the sun.
thesunthesunthesun.Can I call it a rain of breathing arrows?
Does the air fear space? Here is a pictureof you—any you. The sun folds
into it like a melody in the ear.Who will sing the sun? My friends will sing the sun.
Who will sing the sun? My friends will sing the sun.Chris Martin is the author of American Music (Copper Canyon 2008) and grew up on N. Tejon Street.
The Coming Rain
Now with the breath of coming rain
The poplars sway, a troubled row,
Like old wives rocking to and fro
In pain;
They shake their heads in shocked surprise
And whisper underneath their breath,
Like mourners in a house of death,
And lift their aprons to their eyes
Again.Nellie Burget Miller, a resident of Colorado Springs since 1908, was the Poet Laureate of Colorado from 1923 until her death in 1952.