Dixie Lee Partridge

From Downstream

Whatever landscape a child is exposed to early on, that will be the sort of gauze through which he or she will see all the world afterward.—Wallace Stegner They must have had names. To us…

Noted in the Dark

Some nights here there’ve been singings      the children out into twilight . . . their countings,their hidings, their      ally ally oxen frees.And sometimes the crickets were not sounding bereft      but offered impressions you needed to hear. Now in…

These Are the Hours

when birds disappear taking strips of light      folded in feathersnight insects ready themselves      for meals from leaves of rose and raspberrythe hollow by the lane      pools with evening like waterno moonrise cool radiance      but night…

Vantage: Hoback Rim to Wind River

Closed to drift most of the year,trails descend through short lives of wildflowersbright in colonies, August air verging on frost,its thin metallic edge:snow squalls visible aheadwhere a continent divides.Life stays steep. Nothing in the view…

The Days Between—After Leaving Our YoungestAt College

It’s turning fall in this long alley of young trees,poplar leaves still and golding in deep shade.You see no one and hear not even birds. But the pale trunks together seem to humlike choir rows,…

Nocturne, October

The chapel dark, organ pipes glow 
moon-silver. Silence 
is filled: after-ripples, 
the aura of living tones, 
Bach, Handel. 

On Seeing Part of a Cast Iron Stove, Rusting Behind a Shed

We didn’t know they were hard times, 
            even though that winter they had to borrow our hoard:
            seven dollars from me and five from my sister. 
            Our days were the usual homemade loaves, 
            peaches we’d bottled, our own half-beef in the locker, 

Luggage

You are required to keep the poundage low: 
two large cases and a carry-on: 
what you take for months overseas. 
In a year of famine, you have volunteered 

Abandoned Farmyard, November

Today I saw near a barn 
the bed and crossbar of an old hayrack, 
sunk into earth like the hull of a boat, 
a dying thistle bloom grown out 

Cliff Dwellings

Here, rock has a soft face
and wind moves above like spirit.
I listen down the long slant
of switchback trails, steps carved
where red rock accordions through the canyon.

One of the Women

One of the women inside me 
cannot rejoice with anyone. 
She stays in the shadows 
bowing her head. 
Her long hair has never been cut. 

Words for Late Summer

Cornmeal, dusted over these loaves 
like pollen. And I wish again 
for the old unwritten recipes: brown breads, 
chicken baked in a wrap of cornmeal, 
family reunion picnics I can’t match 
with my own. 

One Sunday’s Rain (After Word of My Father’s Illness)

All morning: rainwater 
off the roof onto pebbles 
washed smooth of pale soil 
in the garden. 

Night Myths

Notes for a Son, 19, Living Abroad

Breadcrumbs

Leave of Absence

Movements Giving Off Light

RELEASE: A Moment

Saturday: One Version (Fourth Week of an Unidentified Illness)

Bread: A Returning

Descending Order

Moon Phases: Childhood

Mountain Turn-out: Week After My Father’s Funeral

“Watercress Grows Best in Running Water”

After a Late Night, Waiting

Afterward

Above the Estuary

Night Light

Night Work Near Escalante

Movement: Out of Doors, Out of Town, In Dangerous Times

The Riverbank, Late Winter: Living North

The Fall of My Fiftieth Year

Eighteen Thousand Sundowns

Reading into Dusk

After My Brother’s Remission

Some with Shadows

While Planting Hollyhocks

White Rain (forty years since our meeting)

Flying Out

Time Being

In this Version of Autumn

Vitae

Visible from Here

Dark Energy

Shade

Evenings in October

Not Far Off Trail, Late Summer