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.

Dark-Eyed Junco

 

tickering, skittish

then purling to trees   tiny with trills

hilo de agua…

kew!   indigenous knowledge   pale bluish

or greenish egg   compact

nest of rootlets

Greet me Bees rats

We’ve been called in to the visible world

We’ve been called in

Sombrita

de fieltro

chalice of petals

Two birds are lost in my breast   loose trill

lined with grasses or hair

parallel knowledge

flash in flight   Aire voluto…

And the waves my only treasure

va y va

- Marcia Casey

Marcia Casey lives in Wilson and teaches poetry workshops at C-V Ranch. This poem is a “cento” composed of lines gleaned from field guides, poetry, texts on ethno-ornithology, and first-hand observation.

 

Tidal Locking

We know the trepidation of the spheres

and distances measured in beams.  How near

does each arm of Donne’s compass

reach, like spider filament for a truss,

spinning across a growing galaxy?

We orbit the blackness by degrees,

our stuck faces, like Charon and Pluto

stretched beyond a desperate sostenuto,

searching for how to agree

on our topography.

- Diana Smith

This poem originally appeared in the Spring 2011 volume of the Jackson Hole Review.

Counting Wild Horses

The most efficient way

to count

wild horses

is helicopter flights—the great

speed and whir

of blades in air drives

mustangs from the brush

We count them

three piebald

seven chestnut

two roan

all grey with dust of the plain

Over the low thrum

of the heli comes

the rumble

of hooves black

cracked from shifting rocks

and shale

They gallop towards the ravine

below them, the river

Just when it seems

we will lose them all

they peel from the brink

manes swirling

like plover wings

over salt-damp sand

- Jenny Minniti-Shippey

Jenny Mininiti-Shippey is the managing editor of Poetry International and a professor at San Diego State University. This poem was featured in the Jackson Hole Review, Spring 2011.

 

WiseBark: a Cambium Incantation

WhiteBark Matriarch

Old Growth Patriarch

Enter our Mind Field now

Old Growth Matriarch

WhiteBark Partriarch

Engage our Mind Field now

Like Pelican    Elephant    Whale

            Keepers of the Records of Time

Beings of eternal wisdom

            The WhiteBarks are part of this tribe

With twisting twirl and spiral dance

           What history You have seen

Lacquered in lichen    torched by lightning

           Such eternity links every cell

Perched by birds    scared by fires

           Scratched by claws of great Bear

You awaken within us    lessons remembered

          Constellated in your wise bark core

Entwined           intertwined

          Your sweet nuts caviar for carnivores

Cambrian wisdom       ancient and kind

          Resides in your cambium core

WhiteBark Matriarch

Old Growth Patriarch

Enter our Heart Mind now

Old Growth Matriarch

WhiteBark Partriarch

Engage our Heart Mind now

- Lyn Dalebout


Lyn Dalebout is a poet, educator, sidereal astrologer, and 30+ year resident of Grand Teton National Park.