Travel - Clyde Park, Montana

Like driving into a Terrence Malick film. Extraordinary beauty.

Clyde Park, Montana, north on highway 89 with absolutely NO road signage contributes to a dream-like-far-away-non-logical American experience.

The services are off the highway. The drive up Rock Creek toward the Crazies is sublime.

Richard Ford captures the feel of the landscape and the life of Montana in ROCK SPRINGS.
Open. Wild. True. Vast. A crescendo of magical realism.

Downtown Clyde Park with a pizza place, hardware store and Glenn's shopping center. Glenn's is open, organized, with a great meat counter and lots of heads on the wall. Been there since 1948. Sidney Wiley as the third owner is making things happen. Soon a bakery two doors down.

It's Gershwin, Willie Nelson, Louis Armstrong and The Rolling Stones wrapped up in one sensual experience. 

National Poetry Month - William Carlos Williams

This Is Just To Say

William Carlos Williams, 1883 - 1963

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

National Poetry Month - Kathleen Matson

Writer, photographer, blogger and poet Kathleen Matson Blurock lives in Los Angeles, California, Livingston, Montana and Pittenweem, Scotland.

Lucky to have my poem chosen for the window of SAX & FRYER, oldest store in Livingston, Montana. Opened 1883, one year after the town was founded.

A Place to Hide

That summer I found places to hide 

around the neighborhood.

The metal tubes stacked

on Grimes’ lot behind our house

was one of my favorites. 

I sat in one on rainy days, 

smelled the air, 

and would not be bothered. 

I hid under the stairway 

and read comic books 

in the neighbor’s hall closet.

I sneaked in the back door, 

turned on the light,

and sat under jackets and coats 

in privacy.

From the backseat floor 

of Mom’s ‘41 Chevy, 

I rolled down the window, 

and watched ants crawl 

over the tops of pink and white peonies 

that lined the driveway. 

I found places to hide 

so I could be alone.

I found places to hide 

from my father’s anger.

I found places to hide 

where I listened 

to what the rain had to tell me,

or the ants,  

or the peonies, 

still my favorite flower. 

National Poetry Month - Marc Beaudin

This piece is excerpted from Notes from the Grizfork: A Year of Watching in Montana's Paradise Valley, Poems & Observations 

by Marc Beaudin 

This piece gives you Montana. 
Thank you Marc Beaudin of 
Elk River Books. 

Elk River Books

I wake this morning to another dusting of snow on the high mountains, but down here in the valley, the day grows warm like a Michigan Indian summer – memories of youth sanctified by age. The magpies scatter as I step from my cabin and a red-shafted flicker clings to the uppermost branch of a dying willow. Later in the day, a raven holds the identical spot. So too, red gives way to black in our rivers and blood.

Click here to read "Notes From the Grizfork" 

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National Poetry Month - Nikki Giovanni

Nikki Giovanni - Internationally renowned poet and A University Distinguished Professor at Virginia Tech. Along with Virginia Fowler, they have created the Fowler-Giovanni fund: "The Answer is Yes: Fowler-Giovanni English Department Program Endowment." The Answer is Yes to the value of celebrating people from underrepresented groups; Yes to artists and scholars; Yes to students just finding their voices; Yes to the arts and humanities; Yes to people who will use and remember Giovanni's work; Yes to Virginia Tech as a place where the arts and humanities thrive. 

And talk about thriving........I have read this poem ALOUD for many years. 

Thank you Nikki. Thank you Virginia.

Ego Tripping (there may be a reason why) 

by Nikki Giovanni

I was born in the congo
I walked to the fertile crescent and built
    the sphinx
I designed a pyramid so tough that a star
    that only glows every one hundred years falls
    into the center giving divine perfect light
I am bad
I sat on the throne
    drinking nectar with allah
I got hot and sent an ice age to europe
    to cool my thirst
My oldest daughter is nefertiti
    the tears from my birth pains
    created the nile
I am a beautiful woman
I gazed on the forest and burned
    out the sahara desert
    with a packet of goat's meat
    and a change of clothes
I crossed it in two hours
I am a gazelle so swift
    so swift you can't catch me
    For a birthday present when he was three
I gave my son hannibal an elephant
    He gave me rome for mother's day
My strength flows ever on
My son noah built new/ark and
I stood proudly at the helm
    as we sailed on a soft summer day
I turned myself into myself and was
    jesus
    men intone my loving name
    All praises All praises
I am the one who would save
I sowed diamonds in my back yard
My bowels deliver uranium
    the filings from my fingernails are
    semi-precious jewels
    On a trip north
I caught a cold and blew
My nose giving oil to the arab world
I am so hip even my errors are correct
I sailed west to reach east and had to round off
    the earth as I went
    The hair from my head thinned and gold was laid
    across three continents
I am so perfect so divine so ethereal so surreal
I cannot be comprehended
    except by my permission
I mean . . . I . . . can fly
    like a bird in the sky . . .


www.nikki-giovanni.com

National Poetry Month - Charles Bukowski

One of 100 greatest poets worldwide.

Born in Germany and raised in Los Angeles, Bukowski is known as the barfly.

Time magazine called him "a laureate of American lowlife."

Funny, true and heartbreaking, Charles Bukowski's work is not to be missed.

The Laughing Heart

your life is your life

don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.

be on the watch.

there are ways out.

there is light somewhere.

it may not be much light but

it beats the darkness.

be on the watch.

the gods will offer you chances.

know them.

take them.

you can’t beat death but

you can beat death in life, sometimes.

and the more often you learn to do it,

the more light there will be.

your life is your life.

know it while you have it.

you are marvelous

the gods wait to delight

in you.

Charles Bukowski