Poets’ Corner: Bridger on a Yule Night

22 Dec Poets’ Corner: Bridger on a Yule Night

Telluride regional local Kierstin Bridger got several early Xmas presents. In October she won a Women Writing The West Award in the Poetry category for her book, “Demimonde,” which delves into Telluride’s sultry, salty past and our ladies of the night. (More on that here.) One month later, in November, she became the winner of the 9th Fortnight Poetry Prize for a poem entitled “Of Arc.” (Read the poem here.) And earlier in the month, Kierstin got Second Place (for her “Red Cross”) from Alternating Current’s Charter Oak Award for Best Historical. Below is her Xmas present to our readers as she recalls a special Yule night.

Here We Awoke, A Choir of Quiet Angels

Remember the Yule night when the snows began,
scalloped power lines dipped us into blackout.

The sky— punch-purple as we set about an iced midnight
we were wanderers drunk on the heavens and one can of beer,

wide-eyed ingénues in slow thrall.  No tire tread or high beam
to worry our path, the town stock still as abandoned

moonshine. Our flashlight spot like a watered whiskey shot
on a polished marble bar. We saw how the storm absolved

ramshackle heaps and burnt grass jag, how it purified
the stained streets, left our land forgiven and undulant,

a chaste sea of satin and meringue—
beyond virginal, beyond the stretch of our arms, past

the vanishing rails and roads, past our own expectations
past our fading innocence, the white burden on our map marked “X.”