After leading our workshop at Eastern Oregon Correctional Institution, we drive sixty out of Pendleton over Deadmans Pass — the treacherous double-hair pin curved highway that gains over 2000-ft in elevation. Semi-trailers flash their hazards as they crawl alongside us. I find myself involuntarily narrowing my shoulders as if we are squeezing through a tight door jam. At this entrance into the Blue Mountains, a roadside pullout offers an extraordinary view of the lushly farmed valley and the rolling hills below. By making the trek monthly, we witness the drama produced by changing light. After a busy morning of preparing for our trip, the long drive to Pendleton, and the intense work of the writing workshop this final leg of the trip comes as a welcome relief. Some evenings as we ascend the pass, it seems like we are climbing straight into the stars. Late spring brings robust sunsets that defy a camera. Throughout our travel day our eyes search far out into the horizon. Nightfall arrives, narrowing the view and with it delivers a time for quiet reflection.
A painting and writing by WC Puppy Ponderosa:
Ponderosa pines rise high into the twilight sky.
Above, I behold, the story they told as night’s first stars emerge,
a tale of old, predating time.
From Jai’s Moon Cold Shoulder:
There are different forms of freezing,
The side of a hill, a mountain really
At mid-day surrounded by pine and ponderosa
February in the Rockies at base camp with friends.
From Aaron Grover’s Lower the Lights:
Lower the lights
Your radiance slay us
Is it not enough?
You push us to the fringe
That you illuminate our sins
From Philip Thornton’s Shadows:
These shadows taunt me
Just like the lights slipping by on that
Street on the other side of the gate
My life was such a mistake
Too many times I watched it all turn to ashes
Lua by Ian Lohrman:
full moon mother of emotional flux and reflux
your soft beam kneads my supple ocean
Your waxing and waning, the cadence of your lunation
pouring me through timeless hydrologic cycles of memory
And, Nightfall by Michael Stepina:
Between the motion of light and stillness of Dark
We find our resolution inside the spectrums of this prison.
Only in the middle of this perception,
Where light and dark are one
can there exist such a balance that has the power
to turn saints into sinners and sinners into saints.
As night falls, we find balance between light and dark, the certain and uncertain. We begin to wind our brains and our bodies down. It seems so natural to draw close as the light lowers. We circle up to conserve heat, our eyes search dark shadows, guarding our space to make certain that it is safe. We scour imagined darkness and finally close our eyes to dream. | TDS
My aim when I write is to put myself on the page. Reading these poems, while I do not know the struggles behind them, allowed me to feel a kinship with the author. Thanks for publishing these works.