Crisosto Apache and Lorrie Wolfe
by Crisosto Apache
Colorado Poet Laureate 2026
Photo courtesy of Crisosto Apache
Canalize Carnage
Here we are always in perpetual throes
of death’s throws
You said to me with whispers of blowing sand
We are two foolish bags walking the tight wire
Electric in the need to wander the outskirts
of stone and plateaus trying desperately
Trying to find the homestead of our lands
from the trying hands of our timeless grip
Here in these narrow rows, people walk, not
staggering through each bewildering corridor
Leading to a pile of soft ash, sand, and stone
in the glistening quartz, granules shimmer
Disrupted by plastic remains and oil, scattering
with a desperate need to swallow their elements
Expanding to the east, the west, to the north,
and to the grueling clouds rolling into nothing
Releasing the moisture, a wet swelling birth,
nourishing the cracks of each dry open cavity
Wandering the small endless field with earth
squeezing beneath the stones for a millennium
Red dust settles above ground onto the seed
as water slithers forward, growing forever tired
Weary water drops drop everywhere where
legions charge the way through soft arroyos
The moving gray air covers the open night sky
lingering about at waving arms lengthening
Toward the break of day masses wait for midday
equivalent to a thousand years of spiraling land
mountains, plateaus, cliffs, valleys, ridges, basins,
gorges, arroyos, ditches, culverts, furrows, gullies,
Cutaneous linings wet with the edges of water
steeping from diurnal voices over the years
Circadian breath…inhaling… exhaling – pause
Circadian breath – pause…inhaling… exhaling
Twigs and branch tips create a nearly new slurry
waking the mouths and openings, swallowing
monstrous bundles of organic debris long lost
What will the mother think?
What will the children think?
What will the ancestor think?
Humanity is trapped among the turmoil, lost to the
leaking torrid soil once rampant with lush beauty
Statement for the poem:
Lately, my thoughts have centered on humanity’s relationship with the Earth and the land. As a society, we get so caught up in our own internal turmoil that we lose focus on how the Earth continues to heal us while sustaining an immense global population. “Canalize” literally refers to waterways, but it can also mean building specific paths toward a better outcome, draining infection from a wound, or identifying how genetic phenotypes adapt to their environments.
Eco-poetics has forced me to look closer at human adversity over time—and how the land absorbs those struggles without question, quietly storing memories and actions while carrying on its own healing process.
The impact of modern development, consumerism, and capitalism has placed immense stress on natural resources, depleting them to a noticeable degree and making it difficult for ecosystems to thrive. In recent years, rising temperatures and lower precipitation have forced animals out of their natural environments to seek nourishment in urban areas. While people often view their presence as a nuisance, we are actively paving over their habitats and food sources, throwing off our responsibility to maintain a proper balance.
This poem is an attempt to advocate for the restoration of that natural balance.
is(ness) by Crisosto Apache
From Gnashing Teeth Press. Available at https://gnashingteethpublishing.com/product/isness-by-crisosto-apache/?srsltid=AYCX9vI58lmy0U864FoPbGt8Hh5PsEWZHj0B7wYHBU-qBolDco2j7zNz
by Lorrie Wolfe
Photo by Steve Voynick and Carolyn Shotwell
Climbing Upward Beside the Poudre
“There are rivers in the sky.”
Elif Shafak
Short pines and tiny blue spruce perch on narrow cracked ledges
bending low above the Poudre’s banks, determined to survive despite
last year’s burn, flood and mud, in the ever-present pulse of wind.
There’s no relief, even when night’s blast retreats into dawn’s soft soughing,
Charcoaled trunks lift their peeling arms,
scarecrows left from the last burn. It’s fire season again.
Winds whirl and wind across the landscape
curling like dervishes in fevered ecstasies,
startling juniper fronds, needle tips emerald and dusty blue,
pines aching upwards as they
contort themselves to accommodate the blow’s patterns.
New grass rises, sharp-tipped tinder in pebbled soil.
Why do I fight so hard to climb?
To take in the width of sky above timberline?
To hope the mountain remembers me?
Or just to feel the wind on my cheeks?
The toes of my boots raise dust and catch in russet-toned vines.
Sun and heat release whiffs of minty sage, rousing willow roots to dream of water.
The river snakes downhill, unable to resist
gravity’s tug, leaving me to lean and pull uphill alone.
Statement for the poem:
In 1972 I moved up Poudre Canyon, west of Fort Collins. I lived in a one-room cabin on the banks of the Poudre River. After a few months, I moved to a slightly larger cabin farther up the canyon, but still lived like a hermit with a wood stove and no running water or phone. Eventually, when the winter cold became too much for my brave little wood stove to overcome, I moved back into “town.” But my sojourn in the canyon was the start of a love affair with the mountain. Despite the passage of 50 years, with a long marriage, raising children, career and…just life intervening, my memories of the canyon and the river are still clear
The Language of Crows by Lorrie Wolfe
From Middle Creek Publishing. Now available at www.LorrieWolfe.com or Amazon.com
