Mountain Time

We are a mountain people,

Great lovers of land and time.

Of seldom trod peaks and valleys,

Of swift rivers under stone,

Of snow slowly freezing to ice.

We are a great tribe of many peoples,

Great lovers of trees and wind,

Of bear and marten, eagle and pika.

We mark our lives by the time of the mountain,

We live and die,

cherish and sorrow,

rise and fall

we become our truest selves,

all on the mountains’ time.

Oh! To be in the moment, to feel the now of hard stone and to breathe the bluest sky-

That is why, we are mountain people,

Living our lives by the mountains’ time.

- Tenley Thompson Bowen

Tenley Thompson Bowen is a wildlife guide and photographer from Jackson, Wyoming.

 

In the Silence

In the silence the marbled moon

Rests blue on the saw tooth silhouette of black pines

Strung along the ridge and diffuses silvered translucence

Across rocky terrain pocked with scattered drifts and clumps of snow.

 Muffled thumping from cloven hooves striking frozen ground interrupts.

I stand, listening in the burning chill of a rising wind,

Straining to discern something recognizable among darkly shadowed trees.

A puff of hot breathe mists in the frigid air at park’s edge.

Indistinct shapes scramble through gray and black lodgepoles,

Becoming a dozen elk, closely bunched, steaming heat. 

They abruptly halt.  One coughs.  Then, another.  

The lead cow, ears forward, listens.

 I can barely see her head turn toward me

When shrill yelps and clipped howls erupt ,

Shattering the calm in a scattered, eerie chorus.

The old cow lunges down slope, leading her throng deeper into the night.

- Terry Roice 

Terry Roice is the Language Arts teacher at Summit High School, where he helps students host various poetry slams and events throughout the year.

 

Running at Night

We ran until our lungs gave out

Yelling at the top of our lungs like sirens passing each other in the field.

Laughing at ourselves and the joy of being irreverent 

And then it hit me

Later

In the quiet cold of a lonely bed 

That I needed to just keep running

And yelling

That I had so much to get out 

That I needed to wail, sob, fall over exhausted and then still utter more

Moaning into the earth and heaving prayers up to the sky

Keeping time with the waves of emotion rolling up from within 

The recognition of my truest self

Of loneliness

Of the soft underbelly of being that never gets exposed

Of the most desperate needing and longing for love and acceptance

- Hatton Littman 

Hatton Littman is a film & video teacher, independent filmmaker, writer, and private tutor in Big Sky, Montana.