Category: Utah

Categories
2021 American Place Colorado New Mexico Poems Utah

Last Day, Last

It’s the last day
Of our family outing
Alone I sit with
Dog and pen
To re-collect this
time spent passing
With my loved ones
Out in the open
Breathing the air
Of the American West
Full of trees
And smoke and dust
Hot air, cool air
Dry air, wet air
We’ve made so many stops
I can no longer compare.
I’m bone-tired from
100 Miles walked
So many things we’ve seen
So many times we’ve talked
All such inspiring scenes
No aspirations mocked
To find this life serene
On happiness we’ve stocked
The bare cupboards
Of our souls
And fill our empty holes
With moments where we lived
So that we’d have more to give
Each other and our world
Full of memories we clutch like pearls.

Categories
2021 American Place Garden Psalms Poems Utah

Archland

The Land of Edward Abbey
The Land of Desert Solitaire
The Land that inspired
An entire conservation movement.
The Land of the Black Widow
The Coyote and the Rattlesnake
Where Mountain Lions used to roam before they were banished from their home by the development from which The Park was developed to protect.
The Land of Red Sand and Slick Rock where if you walk long enough
You will be rewarded with Vistas that thwart adjectives of all sorts to describe this incommunicable beauty.
This Land where stones fall away to make the objects of your day’s
Pursuit across this waterless garden.
The Land that draws so many
Out of their homes; out of their cities
To reunite their families and populate their Snapchat feeds.
This Land that calls the human spirit to bear this Heat and push their limits to be inspired by This Land
And renew this desire for protection
So that generation after generation
May review and renew This Land until the rains make something new of This Land!

Categories
2021 American Place Poems Utah

A Horse Named “Unlucky”

Boys Are Dumb

Boys are dumb and I was one.
My brother yet another…
Having started our vacation in canyons
With adventures beyond our imagination
My brother and I headed out for a walk
Into the sandstone curves of Arches’ rocks.
Taller and faster he tracked on ahead
And separated we became instead.
Too far out to go back, without the
Brother I lacked, I kept searching around ’til
I found him at the edge of a sweeping bowl.
And, down deep in that hollowed out hole
Laid the scattered bones of a horse that
Became known as “Unlucky.”
Fascinated by this find, into that hole we climbed
Only to leave ourselves with no escape route.
After hollers and shouts, our luck too had
Run out and we resolved to settle
In for the night. Our backs to the wall
We sat with whistles to blow
Tunes as our call out for help.
As day finished up and the sun drifted
Down, it’s hard to know how long we
Chirped. Long enough that our Mom, full
Of worry, dragged Dad out to search
For these dumb boys who kept running off.
These whistles that they bought us
For just such a cause had led them
Unto our holey predicament. Mom found us
In our hole, with our backs against the wall,
Chirping like birds getting ready for the night.
Our father she found to haul us out of
The ground, too happy to scold,
These boys they raised to be bold.

From the Journal of Judy Sutherlin