“The mountains were so wild and so stark and so very beautiful that I wanted to cry.” Jane Wilson-Howarth, Snow-fed Waters

there has always been the wind and on that day
it was pewter, playing tag with afternoon clouds,
but dawn was as clear as window glass and
the distant Sangre de Cristo Mountains were
the lost backdrop to my old cellular visions and
the subject of fine artists, though none to be seen

galleries were hung with signs “gone fishing,”
so we sat on a rough bench to eat our churros,
held mugs of champurrado, sweet and foamy,
stayed to see the sun setting at that far point
were the trees appear sparse and the highest
peaks showed themselves, symbols of promise

we waited to see the earth curl around sky’s
soft edge, somewhere a well-traveled sagebrush
burst into a flaming sunset and dusted it with gold
and our remembrance of time before time measured

© 2019, poem, Jamie Dedes; Photo courtesy of Bill Johnson under CC SA 3.0  license

ABOUT 

Jamie Dedes. I’m a Lebanese-American freelance writer, poet, content editor, blogger and the mother of a world-class actor and mother-in-law of a stellar writer/photographer. No grandchildren, but my grandkitty, Dahlia, rocks big time. I am hopelessly in love with nature and all her creatures. In another lifetime, I was a columnist, a publicist, and an associate editor to a regional employment publication. I’ve had to reinvent myself to accommodate scarred lungs, pulmonary hypertension, right-sided heart failure, connective tissue disease, and a rare managed but incurable blood cancer. The gift in this is time for my primary love: literature. I study/read/write from a comfy bed where I’ve carved out a busy life writing feature articles, short stories, and poetry and managing The BeZine and its associated activities and The Poet by Day jamiededes.com, an info hub for writers meant to encourage good but lesser-known poets, women and minority poets, outsider artists, and artists just finding their voices in maturity. The Poet by Day is dedicated to supporting freedom of artistic expression and human rights.  Email thepoetbyday@gmail.com for permissions, commissions, or assignments.

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Recent and Upcoming in Digital Publications * The Damask Garden, In a Woman’s Voice, August 11, 2019 / This short story is dedicated to all refugees. That would be one in every 113 people. * Five poems, Spirit of Nature, Opa Anthology of Poetry, 2019 * From the Small Beginning, Entropy Magazine (Enclave, #Final Poems), July 2019 * Over His Morning Coffee, Front Porch Review, July 2019 * Three poems, Our Poetry Archive, September 2019

“Every pair of eyes facing you has probably experienced something you could not endure.”  Lucille Clifton

8 Comments

  1. Beautiful poem, Jamie! 👏 Love the imagery of nature and how you express those memories in a sort of impressionistic mode. First, the wind’s force and the coming of a clear dawn, where the verses mainly appeal to our sense of sight, perhaps a bit of sound too with the wind. Then the “churros” and the “champurrado” directly speak to our smell and taste. Churros are popular in my country, Catalonia and all over Spain, but I had to look up champurrado. Never tasted it, but it seems to be similar to our combination of hot chocolate with churros (xocolata amb xurros, in the Catalan language). I love how your poem moves on to the sun setting and also love the image of the “peaks” as “symbols of promise”. So visual and uplifting! And the last stanza is also very beautiful. “Flaming sunset” adds great strength to the image as well as the idea of dusting gold on remembrance. Memories are based on the ephemeral moments of our lives you so well describe here. They come and leave like paint strokes on canvas, don’t they?

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  2. ‘In the beginning or in the end,we are but particles-
    unknown powerless realizing changes that emerge
    in our soul and spirit, settle in the blood and flesh,
    becoming one with us, invaders to us,they occupy
    our spaces,our inner chambers,pollute the air we
    breathe,but all this is part of the nature that we so
    dearly love,appreciate and be happy and peaceful
    with,nature too loves us dearly seeking to possess
    sometimes abruptly sometimes slowly,silently so
    quietly that we are caught unawares,sometimes
    with terror and fear, the strength then lies not in
    defense but in the bravery to face and fight it, all

    Our prayers merge with the majesty and grandeur
    of nature,its beauty color and sweet fragrance,
    combine as love meets love and differences
    disappear, spaces vanish and glorious heavens appear.

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Thank you!