Sunset Anvil Cloud

 

DEATH'S BLACK HOLE

                                                    -for Mr. & Mrs. Five Grain & the Robert Report

some just keep on keeping on

plow through snowpiles of pain

secure between cañon walls

others get knocked down

& the walls come tumbling in

on the hardwood floors of before

the other night we watched

a sunset anvil cloud of orange 

over the San Juan’s Wilson Range

just a brief moon look & then the sky

went black with stars like spores like

holes sucking us into the mystery

Monday's poem

 

Bio

Conceived in New Mexico

where my bombardier dad was stationed

during WWII I was born in peace

Grew up in Mountain View (California)

& as the Mountain Village grew (Colorado)

I raised three families

Divorced three wives

Lost a fourth. Had a child with a fifth

without any dread wedlocks

Now I marry people

having forsaken the collar for a ballcap

that belonged to Dolores LaChapelle

Living wildly alone like Capt. Barefoot

A life filled with friends & family

Kin of all kinds

& 

random acts of 

total surprise

John Nelson

 

As a poet and fan of all the spoken word arts, I've learned to love cowboy poetry that's well done. I like to think of it as the edge effect. A marriage of English prosody and American colloquial speech.  Being true to both is tricky. 

I got to read several times with Peggy Godfrey of the San Luis Valley who always said "cowboy" is a verb. She managed to get her feminist  leanings into real ranch stories and we all loved her at the old Sparrows Poetry Festival in Salida.

I first encountered John in David Rothman's anthology: The Geography of Hope -- Poets of Colorado's Western Slope (Conundrum Press, Crested Butte, 1998). Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer of Placerville, Luis Lopez of Grand Junction and I all appeared in that collection, along with several poet friends who have passed: Bruce Berger of Aspen, James Tipton of Fruita and Karen Chamberlain of Aspen.

I loved that David included John along with the rest of us poets. His "Word Wrangling" poem is a classic -- an encounter with a pedantic English "expert" poet and pack string word wranglin' John. It's funny and makes its point sharp as a needle in the thumb.

I caught up with John a few months back and he shared this new poem with me. And I'm proud to be sharing with you.

I’M GOIN’ SOMEDAY

 

Some days come and some days go

But someday never gets here.

Someday is just a dream away.

Someday is always next year.

 

Someday we’ll all go fishing.

I’m taking my family with me.

Heading to that lunker lake

Where the trophy is bound to be.

 

Someday we’ll raft the river

Or maybe paddle by canoe.

We’ll soak up fun and challenge.

There’s nothing we won’t do.

 

Someday I’m heading up north

Or maybe I’ll head west.

Take my son on that dream hunt

Where hunting is the best.

 

We’ll go by boat.  We’ll go by plane

Or maybe mule or horse.

Somewhere where big game is big,

In the wilderness of course.

 

Someday I’ll win big in the lotto.

And when my ship comes in,

I’ll find the time.  I’ll find the money.

I’ll be gone with the wind.

 

But, something says there’s work to do

And bills that must be paid.

That time and money can’t be found.

They both must be made.

 

So, the time had come for action.

Someday would soon be here.

I’d go for broke. I’d make my move.

I’d overcome my fear.

Then I called the man to set it up

And confirm our coming date.

He said, “Someday ’s been booked for years.

That we were way too late.”  

 

It seems that everyone is going someday,

The most popular of days.

He suggested that I try firsts or seconds

of Junes, Julys or Mays.

 

And when I cursed in great frustration

He sensed that I turned red.

So, he agreed to confirm a date for me.

That someday I’d be dead.

 

And on that day we will all be together,

My family and my friends.

They’ll toast the times that could have been

And say their last amens.

 

They’ll say, “ol’ John  was quite a guy.”

“He knew how to set a goal.”

Then bury those dreams right with him

Inside a six foot hole.

 

Because some days come and some days go,

And someday is going to get here.

Some day when your dreaming is done,

Some day there’ll be no next year.

 

So make the time and take the money

And make your dreams come true.

Because every day is someday!

But, the decisions are up to you.

 

 

John Nelson 

Gunnison, Colorado 

Goodtimes New Mexico Tour

Taos Reading

Bill Nevins is the author of AWE, a book of poetry and prose, a freelance journalist at The Paper, staff reporter at The Enchanted Circle News, and works at Green Left. He studied Journalism and Mass Communication at University of California at Berkeley and English Language and Literature at Iona University.

He currently lives in Albuquerque and Angel Fire, New Mexico.

Art Goodtimes, poet, basketweaver, journalist and five-term 

San Miguel County Commissioner (Green Party) who retired in 2016, is known for his amanita-spotted red Toyota truck at the head of the annual Telluride Mushroom Festival Parade, for his booming voice that can also be soft and soothing, and for his practice of weaving baskets during county commissioner meetings. He is back from a three-year challenge with cancer, continuing his life’s work of building community through relationships and creating platforms for poetry.

Goodtimes learned “the passing of the gourd” from Dolores LaChapelle, who founded the Way of the Mountain Learning Center in Silverton, Colorado, back in the Seventies. A gourd circle “is really about really listening,” Goodtimes said, 

"as well as performing." It usually follows the readings

giving everyone a chance, peer-to-peer, to share their own words.

Info on the Taos reading HERE

Poet buddy Bill Nevins reading

Info on the Santa Fe reading HERE

Robyn Hunt & Art Goodtimes after a reading
in Santa Fe in 13014 [2014 AD]

Info on the Placitas reading HERE

Art wearing Rainbow Hat

YouTube video of Art performing 

at the Jules Playhouse zoom session

"On the Road with a Paleohippie"

HERE

Poem for the 4th

 

MORE THAN SPARK

More than the spark

of the 4th’s faux bombardments

itki’s the dark

with itkis slow burn

of thousands of nuclear fires

which makes me appreciate

the exploding galaxies of stars

that we imitate

That all nature mimics

This space-time desire

to expand beyond all limits

Coloring our lives

saffron, silver, vermillion & gold

but speeding our demise

as a billionaire species

Beautiful

Deadly 

Perplexing

A Poem for John Mansfield

 a fine woodworker polishes his roughcut to best accentuate the grain

poets do that too, tinkering with words

here's my latest version of Golly John

Golly John

We made folks in this county get development permits

Be it fixing a roof or replacing a window

But you just off & die on us?

On the way home to Colorado from Cali

No permit. No notice

That big fat Buddhist ensō of no thing

You knew the heart sutra

Nothing's permanent about 

a Zen cleaver

Chuckled along with the rest of us 

when the Blues Brothers 

bombed on the Valley Floor

You took risks

Worked with kids who said they wanted a lifeline

Tossed them into rafts & ran the rapids

I liked you best over coffee 

in the morning's repartee at Mesa Rose

Pioneer old-timers. Ex-Telluriders

Feisty Floridian short-timers 

who loved to crocodile 

& then told great snapping stories

You took leadership

Wore your advocate jeans. Mixed drinks

& mediums

Some saw you as a fine art cartoonist

who illustrated our absurdities

 Watercolored in the silences

But golly, John. You took a damn quick exit

After shuffling up & down Grand Avenue 

for the last ten years

Manifesting 

that wry savvy calm 

behind the half-smile

Coyote artist. Trustee. Officer of the Peace

Tickling wit out of whim

Fancy out of the angler's cast & spin

One fine spring day, all of a sudden

you spun on an eddy in Whitewater 

& left

Leaving us now unable to imagine

a Wrights Mesa without your

ambling shoes. Your tinkering brushes

Western Slope Poet Laureate

 

Wendy Videlock accepts Western Slope Poet Laureate
trophy at the Center for the Arts in Grand Junction
(Photo by Todd Videlock)

Telluride Institute names Wendy Videlock sixth Western Slope Poet Laureate

Poetry is a niche art. Not a lot of folks practice it, nor are there many who pay much attention. But a consistent few do, as good poetry is mostly good storytelling, shaped by thousands of years of Western lyric traditions.

For a dozen years the Western Slope has had its own Poet Laureate, an honorary title started in Carbondale at the Karen Chamberlain Poetry Festival. This year the Western Slope Poet Laureate baton is changing hands as it does every two years.

The Telluride Institute’s Talking Gourds Poetry Program named Wendy Videlock of Palisade as the sixth Western Slope Poet Laureate during a reception at the Grand Valley Creative Alliance’s “Art After Hours – With A Twist” event at the Art Center of Western Colorado Saturday May 20th.

The Telluride Institute also honored Dr. L. Luis López of Grand Junction, the outgoing Western Slope Poet Laureate.              

A professor emeritus at Colorado Mesa University, Dr. López taught English, Latin, Ancient Greek and Mythology, as well as serving as Director of the Academic Honors Program. He was awarded two National Endowment for the Humanities fellowships -- one to study lyric poetry with Dr. Helen Vendler at Harvard University and a second one to study the literature of innocent suffering with Dr. Terrence Tilley at St. Michael's College in Vermont.

Dr. López has published five books of poetry, including Musings of a Barrio Sack Boy, A Painting of Sand, and Each Month I Sing (2008), which won the American Book Award and the Colorado Independent Publishers Association annual Best Poetry award.

A widely published Colorado poet, Videlock’s work has appeared in the New York Times, Poetry, Oprah Magazine, Hudson Review, the anthology Best American Poetry and Ted Kooser's syndicated poetry column American Life in Poetry. She performs her work around the region, hosts many regional poetry gatherings and publishes a Trickster Ridge newsletter of poetry events and announcements.

A respected visual artist whose paintings are featured in a number of galleries, Videlock has published four books of poetry with the Able Muse Press of California: Nevertheless (2010), The Dark Gnu and Other Poems (2011), Slingshots and Love Plums (2015) and Wise to the West (2022). She also published a chapbook, What’s That Supposed to Mean, with EXOT Press of New York (2010). And Lithic Press of Fruita has just brought out her latest, a collection of poetry & prose as a mixture of lyric, critical essay, review and memoir, The Poetic Imaginarium: A Worthy Difficulty.

Past Western Slope Poet Laureates include Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer of Placerville, David Rothman of Crested Butte, Art Goodtimes of Norwood and Aaron Abeyta of Antonito.

Art Center of Western Colorado's ballroom