Crossing Colorado

Black Canyon National Park

go to link Juniper High Above Black Canyon © 2013 Bo Mackison

https://paradiseperformingartscenter.com/s57jnr76xw The Fourth Day – East Across Colorado

follow A half-dozen times I’ve circled Black Canyon National Park on vacation maps
and a half-dozen times we lingered too long at Arches or Canyonlands,
and Black Canyon was scratched. Who even knows there is such a place as
Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park anyway?

https://www.yolascafe.com/ipl6yu2x0q Now you can count me among its visitors, I’ll keep its secret.
Here are steep cliffs, ancient rock, craggy spires,
and walls streaked with dragon outlines, erosion’s art work
on rocky canvas 2000 feet from flowing river to cliff edge.

Black Canyon National Park

Tramadol Online Overnight Mastercard Black Canyon National Park © 2013 Bo Mackison

https://geolatinas.org/64maaop Oh, the quiet places, open spaces, vertical wilderness
shared with soaring hawks and eagles.
Cloud cover kept the canyon in shadow, but the river’s song
sounded on the high mesa and wildflowers bloomed
in the roots of twisted junipers.

https://penielenv.com/apru8gi57 Twenty years getting here and I had only half a day
to see what I had missed, a half day to know I’ll return.
When the wind gusts spiked at 50 mph, I knew I’d pushed my luck,
but a tail wind pushed me half-way across Colorado.

Stranded Boat Dock - Curecanti NRA

https://danivoiceovers.com/lep8lx1h09j Stranded Boat Dock © 2013 Bo Mackison

Tramadol Sverige Online Colorado has fine scenery, but those low gray clouds packed with snowy potential
overwhelmed my yearn to pull over and explore.
Still, there was plenty to see –
the up and down rhythm of mountain, valley, mountain.
Tumbleweeds skirted the highways.

https://www.brigantesenglishwalks.com/h5fa8ayt Cimarron, Colorado. Conjurer of Wild West.
Lakes half filled, driftwood sculptures lace the sandy edges.
And colors bleached by winter’s touch take on color — 
greening grasses, tree twigs in muted yellows, pinks, rusty reds,
Weeping willows in yellow-green tangles.
Calves snooze in muddy pastures,
content as their mothers graze nearby.

Dust Storm at Curecanti NRA

https://lpgventures.com/gcpjrjrlw9h Dust Storm at Curecanti © 2013 Bo Mackison

https://guelph-real-estate.ca/74o8faymr Dust clouds swirl around my car at Curecanti.
I stop at another ranger station,
it’s a slow day for recreation, the staff ply me with coffee, maps,
highlight the safest route through the eastern mountain passes.
Another hawk sweeps past my car, hawks are my companion bird this trip.

follow San Isabel National Forest.
Steepy Mountain.
And then Monarch Pass. Fitting, Monarch is the pass to bid me farewell
as I cross the Continental Divide and head towards the plains.

https://www.marineetstamp.com/hy4pmm4rp Salida and a stop at Sally’s Cafe for coffee.
The road follows the Arkansas River,
running with spring melt, thunder-crashing into protruding red rock.
Fly fishermen queue for prime locations.

https://mocicc.org/agricultura/rot3f0p In the high desert town of Cañon City
I watch the last hawk of the day —
dancing, sky diving, it welcomes the evening.

https://purestpotential.com/ks2d0m7 ———

https://www.mbtn.net/?p=mii1kls8 Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. A cross-country traveler by day, and an occasional poet. This is a poem in nine parts, because the trip lasts nine days. This is day four!

Traveling East, A Spring Greening

https://www.mreavoice.org/vy4jonuyxj The greening of the trees in spring rain,
see-through trees like a lacy negligee, the nesting bird
watches from the half-leafed trees.

Traveling in the Rain

source link Rain Travel © 2012 Bo Mackison

https://mocicc.org/agricultura/bf1tldz Calves balancing on gentle hills rub their noses in the wet grasses.
One stands wobbly, leans against its mother.
Others watch their mothers watching them, nibble a bit, suckle,
wander about the remains of last fall’s tattered harvest.

https://alldayelectrician.com/h250g5juqd Darkest brown, Iowa’s earth, earth that dips
and dances. We’ve driven past the Kansas grasslands,
and not yet reached the prairie flat of Illinois.

click here See the family plot tucked tightly between
the edge of the woods and the tilled field;
Splintered posts and strands of wire mark its boundary.
Roughly hewed stones, two rows of three, the mossy inscriptions illegible.
Though one, a mother’s marker, is split in half – part upright,
part broken off and tipped into the rain-soaked grass.
The roughened quarry block, now a rest stop for crows,
splats of white the only sign of life.

Tramadol 50 Mg Buy Clouds hang gray, so low I yearn to stand
and push them high into the skies, high enough to punch an opening into the dim blueness
that is Midwestern sky, give sunlight to the earth.
Yet fog lingers, sky primed in deep grays.

https://danivoiceovers.com/6jz86yxc We pass a highway sign, What Cheer, population 142. Twenty miles south.
I wish to see a town worthy of this name, but we’re on the fourth morning of steady travel.
There is no will to detour.
Tonight we sleep in the familiar ridges and valleys of our familiar bed.

https://www.mbtn.net/?p=d5x4ukz First I will say hello to the house I left a hundred days ago,
walk through the rooms I know by memory, peer out the back window at the apple tree.
I’m told no blossoms remain.

Oklahoma, Gray Skies, and a White Truck

https://www.elevators.com/pemw48t93mp White Truck © 2012 Bo Mackison

follow url I bought a primitive statue of a woman last summer from a stone sculptor the next booth over.
She toppled in a winter storm. My husband mentions this
as he pulls into the Save-n-Go in Dubuque for gas and coffee.

https://geolatinas.org/w24j6tu30n Tomorrow morning I’ll push her upright so we can watch the garden together.
We will meet, eye to eye, and reflect on the greenness of Midwest spring.

https://www.yolascafe.com/boscxfh67y ———————-

follow site Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. After four days of cross-country travel, Bo is back home in the Midwest.