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My poem, This Winter’s Day, won the prestigious Colorado Author’s League 79th Annual Writing Award for best poem, 2020! They are the oldest writer’s group in The Rocky Mountains with quite an amazing list of members, past and present. Clive Cussler, Margaret Coel and Lois Bebe Hayna are past award recipients.

This Winter’s Day

For Mary Oliver

a full quorum of snow
covers my backyard
in the color it should be
in January

 

reclaiming the brown
winter-dormant grass
that drones a longing
into the back of my mind

 

I write this tribute poem
on the day after your passing

 

and it seems
it should be snowing
the sun bowing homage
while it reads your poems

 

allowing you to be
the one to shine today

 

You, of course,
would give the clouds
center stage

 

that slow us into
a deeper rhythm
for this one day,
this one wild and precious day

 

in this one wild
and precious life

 

You would take time
to count crows
and weave ibis wings
upon your tongue

 

seeking prayers
in a blade of grass
beneath a broken bottle
in an abandoned city lot

 

your knees knowing the soil
and the winds, your voice

 

and for so many of us,
your precious words

 

wild and free

 

“What will you do with your one wild and precious life?” Mary Oliver, The Summer Day

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