Poetry Friday -- What We Save

This is a repost from 2008.

My brother and I just spent three days going through the last of the boxes of Mom and Family back home in Colorado. Among other treasures, we found a stack of clippings Mom had pinned on the bulletin board in the kitchen -- pithy quotes, comics, phone numbers...and this poem, printed from the blog eleven years ago.

*        *        *        *        *

This is a chant for the landscape of my growing up years -- the wide, flat, empty, semi-arid short grass prairie of eastern Colorado. The chant is comprised of images, authors, and, in italics, book titles.



The Solace of Open Places
or
It's Not the End of the Earth, But You Can See it From Here

High, Wide and Lonesome
unbroken sod,
O Pioneers! and
my Uncle Bob.

Great Plains: jackrabbits
antelope and Deere,
wagon ruts, meadowlarks
and tumbleweeds found here.

Kent Haruf, Hal Borland, Ian Frazier,
Gretel Ehrlich, Willa Cather, Wallace Stegner.

Eventide, Plainsong
A Sense of Place,
Wolf Willow, My Antonia
Nothing To Do But Stay.

Lark buntings, windmills
towering thunderheads,
grasshoppers, feedlots
the family homestead.

Pioneer Women,
amber waves of grain.
Close my eyes, open a book,
I can go home again.

©Mary Lee Hahn, 2008



Margaret has the Poetry Friday Roundup this week at Reflections on the Teche.

Poetry Friday -- High Plains Wind

Unsplash photo via Matthieu Joannon

High Plains Wind

     (after Wind by James Arthur)

     it's true sometimes I cannot

stop myself from lifting

     the roof shingles

unleashing tumbleweeds snapping

tree branches

muddying the pool I'm nothing

     until I happen

barreling down from the North

     filling eyes with grit

     nostrils too

pelting the streets with dusty sleet

above wheatfields

    surfing the waves of grain

so full of high excitement howling

I borrow the arid topsoil

     and fling it into the ditch

arriving with news of the bindweed

     and the horseflies

at times buffeting you so violently

in ways you register

     as fists

©Mary Lee Hahn, 2018

I am blessed to live in a climate where we have day-long gentle rains that allow the oaks to tower and the corn to grow without irrigation. We are currently several inches over the average rainfall for the year, and yet in the High Dry Plains of Eastern Colorado, even an inch of our rain could save crops and livelihoods. It's desperately dry there, and the wind is unrelenting. When I read Wind by James Arthur, I knew I wanted to tell the story of a more savage and remorseless wind than his rascally wind whose antics include turning umbrellas inside out (I never owned one until I moved to the midwest), stealing hats, and embracing as light as a touch. The wind back home is downright mean-spirited and vengeful.

On a lighter note, we filled the Poetry Friday Roundup Schedule for July-December in under a week! 

Kiesha has this week's roundup at Whispers from the Ridge.

Rain

For the next half of National Poetry Month 2017, 

Malvina will Sing It, and I'll write a poem in response.

Another unifying topic in Malvina Reynolds' songs is the environment. The next few days will feature songs written in the 1960's and 1970's, but which are fresh and topical today.

Ode to an Inch of Life-Giving Rain

Oh, Rain!
You fall so abundantly further east
but we treasure every hundredth of an inch
here on the western high plains.

Oh, Rain!
You have rescued the wheat crop,
not to mention the Russian Olives
in the windbreak on the north side of the house.

Oh, Rain!
You lift every spirit.
Are your ears burning? The inch that fell last night
is the topic of every conversation at the post office.

©Mary Lee Hahn, 2017

June Chalkabration!

A Chalk-ku for Eastern Colorado

uncommonly cool...
gentle rain sprinkling down...
not ever enough...

©Mary Lee Hahn, 2013




2:30 PM and still only 76 degrees.

Only enough rain to get the street wet; not enough to make it through the trees and get the whole driveway wet.

Average YEARLY precipitation in Burlington, Colorado is 16.5 inches. They put the d-r-y in arid out here.



Betsy's hosting the monthly Chalkabration at Teaching Young Writers. Go check out the chalking others have done today!

Poetry Friday -- High Plains in Summer

HIGH PLAINS IN SUMMER

Yesterday it rained.
Fifty-five hundredths
over a three-hour period.
High plains equivalent
of a good, soaking rain.

Today it's clear and hot.
Winds gusting to 39 out of the south.
At least the dirt's not blowing.

Forecast's calling
for high nineties
the next three days.

Tourists driving through on I-70
see flat, boring, brown fields.
They don't realize
those are their groceries
burning up.

©Mary Lee Hahn, 2013


Carol has the Poetry Friday roundup at Carol's Corner. Tomorrow, she and I will link arms and wander through the Denver Botanical Gardens.

Just a few more slots left in the July-December Poetry Friday roundup schedule. If you haven't claimed one, go get one now!

West on I-70

4/18

Flickr Creative Commons photo by Chedder

WEST ON I-70

The horizon circles me

like a coyote

warily

watchfully

remotely

The road shoots me

like an arrow

impassively

relentlessly

directly

Pikes Peak greets me

with a nod

discreetly

solemnly

distantly

© Mary Lee Hahn, 2012