Page Lambert: All Things Literary & All Things Natural

A poem, and then a few thoughts on metaphor... Headstones carry last century’s news etched into granite gone green, lichen as cold as the shade side of an empty house.   I wait while he kneels at his son’s grave, wander the brittle grass paths, find mothers buried with newborns   Born   Died The dates are the same.   No span of life stretches between them.   I find brothers and sisters, a wife, then a child, a husband – the Great Pandemic. Grief is a familiar load.   It bends us at the shoulders, buckles his knees as I wander, waiting for the right time to go to him, the sorrow of a town etched in each stone. Grave after winter grave, I see where death turned the calendar December 1918 January 1919 Seven months later we return to the family plot. Too soon.   The soil hasn’t settled.   They have piled a mound of cold earth on his son’s grave, carving space for the wooden box that holds the grandmothe...

Sometimes, the most memorable moments for an artist or writer are hidden. Sometimes our work itself is hidden. Several weeks ago Roxanne Swentzell told me over dinner and a glass of Blue Moon that she had inserted a PVC pipe into Mud Woman’s center to stabilize the 10-foot-tall sculpture. “But now I have this space that runs from her head to her heart,” she said. “I need to put something special in it. Maybe you have a poem about Denver?” Mud Woman is monumental—certainly not hidden.   The Denver Art Museum commissioned Roxanne to create the piece for their new Native American exhibit and, after months of planning, Mud Woman is coming to life.   The sculpture, officially named Mud Woman Rolls On , is the first thing that greets visitors when they step off the 3 rd floor elevator of the DAM, Denver ’s world class art museum.   Roxanne, a world class sculptor, will be working on the piece all spring and summer .  Rox  is from the Santa Clara Pueblo in N...