by Dick Altman
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Through “Field Work,” farmers and ranchers in rural parts of Colorado, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, and Wyoming were eligible for up to $10,000 to implement creative water projects on their land (think: improved water efficiency, water reliability, water quality, crop yield or crop diversification, and labor efficiency). Nearly 80 producers applied and 12 projects were selected this year, totaling more than $95,000 of investment into research led by farmers and ranchers. These folks are the experimenters, tinkerers, innovators, and iterators who—while Western states agonize over how to resolve antiquated water compacts—have been finding ways to eke out a living from the land. They’re people who have a vested interest in finding ways to use water more effectively—for their own operations and for the good of the West. —LOR Foundation |
Southern Colorado
While born a stream,you gave way to a dam,then a lake swimmingwith impressionistic clouds,clouds coalescing above me,clouds inscribed with geese,I watch scout for new nesting groundsyour rush-plated periphery. While a thousand feet below,a pair of herons,as I approach,loft pterodactyl-like wings,to seek another cove,while a lone seagull,a thousand milesfrom ocean’s home,alightson your boulder-strewn shore,to fill their void. While a horned-toad,no bigger than my thumb,streaks across the path,to escapemy cleated feet,as a swallowtailsamples fresh crownsof Chamisa,into whose stemsthe pebbled formdisappears. While in the water,trout eye me warily,before finninginto shadowsand out of sight—but not beyondeyes of the bald eagle,whose outstretched talonsI last see lofta limp figure that broke,in death,the surface,to snatcha damsel flyemergent. While my eyes shiftto observe you,barefooted,clamber over rocksdefending the shore,a route I fear to test. While you look,from above,as if queen of waves,standing amid formations,submerged,whose gray elongations,boulders immobileof another age,evoke a pod of whales,newly calved,in watersof imagination. While above you.beyond vermillion cliffs,ascend the Silver peaks,whose wallsof white-enameled concavityreturn to our eyessun’s luminescence,as from facetsof cloud-high broken glass. While wind’s pulse unfurlsin a tidal whisperagainst the shore,I’m remindedof decades’ voicesalloyed to conjurea mountain valley, untrammeled,into a victory chalice,embracing a lakecalled Nighthorse—final scene in a dreamto solace warring thirsts,farm or factory,Ute Indian or not,whose perfected comityour spirits bow toeach timewe tread its rim.
Dick Altman writes in the high, thin, magical air of Santa Fe, NM, where, at 7,000 feet, reality and imagination often blur. He is published in Santa Fe Literary Review, American Journal of Poetry, riverSedge, Fredericksburg Literary Review, Foliate Oak, Blue Line, THE Magazine, Humana obscura, The Offbeat, Haunted Waters Press, Split Rock Review, The RavensPerch, Beyond Words, The New Verse News, Sky Island Journal, and others here and abroad. A poetry winner of Santa Fe New Mexican’s annual literary competition, he has in progress two collections of some 100 published poems. His work appears in the first volume of The New Mexico Anthology of Poetry published this year by the New Mexico Museum Press.
