POETS’ CORNER: 2 MORE POEMS FOR VALENTINE’S DAY

10 Feb POETS’ CORNER: 2 MORE POEMS FOR VALENTINE’S DAY

Editor’s note: Did you know that that Italian city of Verona, where Shakespeare’s lovers Romeo and Juliet lived, receives about 1,000 letters addressed to Juliet every Valentine’s Day? We continue with our series of poems for Valentine’s Day with another poem by Art Goodtimes and one more from Word Woman, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer.

Rosemerry is a regular on Telluride Inside…and Out, but Art has been off our pages for awhile. For an update, this short bio establishes Art’s bona fides as a writer – for those who know him only as a councilman and the Grand Poobah of the Telluride Shroomfest.

Art Goodtimes was the founding poetry editor of Earth First! Journal (1981-1991) and poetry co-editor of Wild Earth (1991-2000). Presently he serves as Poet Laureate of the Western Slope  (named at the Karen Chamberlain Poetry Festival in Carbondale, Colorado in 2010). Art has edited the Mountain Gazette’s Way of the Mountain poetry page, and is currently poetry editor for Fungi magazine. His first book was “Embracing the Earth” (Homeward Press, Berkeley, 1984) and his most recent is “As If the World Really Mattered” (La Alameda Press, Albuquerque, 2007). His new chapbook, “Looking South to Lone Cone,” is expected out from Western Eye Press this year.

Under the non-profit umbrella of the Telluride Institute and in collaboration with the Wilkinson Public Library, Arroyo Telluride and Between the Covers Bookstore, Art and Rosemerry started a new poetry group , the Talking Gourds Poetry Club, which meets the first Tuesday of every month at Arroyo, a fine art gallery and wine bar, 220 E. Colorado Ave.

Art Goodtimes

Cuervo (by Art)

How easily we mistook
mere brilliance
for the light.

As if love
flew through us
like a wild current.

The Cuervo
of your night skin
soothing mine.

But out of control.
The air electric.
Hot liquid

where the body had been
& us carried off with it.
Far off

into the shock of solo flight.
A dark tonic
we were meant to drink.

As though our lives
depended on
stripping

spines from the cactus
and squeezing crazy life
from every crazy day.

Snow heart track

Higher Math (by Rosemerry)

Two flames
become one
fire, two drops
become one water,
two breaths become
one air, two stones
become one sand,
two grains bake
one bread, two
lovers make
one life
but there
are so many more
than two
and now
we get
to learn
what else
a flame, a drop,
a breath, a grain,
a love can do.