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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 |
you gave way to a dam,
then a lake swimming
with impressionistic clouds,
clouds coalescing above me,
clouds inscribed with geese,
I watch scout
for new nesting grounds
your 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 miles
from ocean’s home,
alights
on your boulder-strewn shore,
to fill their void.
While a horned-toad,
no bigger than my thumb,
streaks across the path,
to escape
my cleated feet,
as a swallowtail
samples fresh crowns
of Chamisa,
into whose stems
the pebbled form
disappears.
While in the water,
trout eye me warily,
before finning
into shadows
and out of sight—
but not beyond
eyes of the bald eagle,
whose outstretched talons
I last see loft
a limp figure that broke,
in death,
the surface,
to snatch
a damsel fly
emergent.
While my eyes shift
to observe you,
barefooted,
clamber over rocks
defending 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 immobile
of another age,
evoke a pod of whales,
newly calved,
in waters
of imagination.
While above you.
beyond vermillion cliffs,
ascend the Silver peaks,
whose walls
of white-enameled concavity
return to our eyes
sun’s luminescence,
as from facets
of cloud-high broken glass.
While wind’s pulse unfurls
in a tidal whisper
against the shore,
I’m reminded
of decades’ voices
alloyed to conjure
a mountain valley,
untrammeled,
into a victory chalice,
embracing a lake
called Nighthorse—
final scene in a dream
to solace warring thirsts,
farm or factory,
Ute Indian or not,
whose perfected comity
our spirits bow to
each time
we 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.
