Sunday Morning at the Reservoir

The sun scatters rhinestones across the surface of Mackay Reservoir where helldivers and merganser wave at the morning, their white wake chasing wings and webbed feet. 

Dad sits beside me in his canvas chair watching dual lines, waiting for the tug-of-wills between fish and man. 

It's slow again this morning, one rainbow in the creel an hour ago.

 

“Haven't seen the white horse this year.” Dad speaks between another rush of ducks in the distance. 

“Maybe he didn't make it through the winter.”  I meant it as a question, but it sounds like a statement as my thoughts cast out “just like momma.”

“Others have seen him.”  he responds and we fall back into the morning quiet.

I'm trying not to let my mind spin like a bobber in an eddy around the mass of cancer I know is slowly reeling away my dad, but my line snags

and I turn my gaze away toward a drift boat anchored in a hole on the other side.

Laurel Lopez

August 10, 2025

Moon Over Borah

Moon Over Borah

     Photo credit: Willy Braun

It's the way light 

sits on her crags 

sketches shadows 

in charcoal runs 

that disappear in a cluster

of scattered pine. 

The way caliginous clouds 

shroud her apex, 

virga drifting off the skirts 

of the storm. 

She stands watch 

as wind coils devils 

of dust, racing 

a lone pronghorn 

through a tract of sage

where Indian paintbrush 

blooms pink and purple lupine 

sway to the echo 

of thunder rumbling 

down the canyons 

of Lost River Range. 

And always,

it's the way Moon 

sits in her saddle, 

his face glowing soft 

against the climax 

of her summit. 

Laurel

May 28, 2025

Momma

I am trying to define this new ache. To make sense of the picture now the piece of the puzzle that is you is gone. There’s an empty space, a hole where my heart keeps tracing your outline, as if somehow in the drawing I could find a way to put you back.

There are tracks in the snow of my memories where toboggans loaded with ham and cheese sandwiches are pulled into winter pines and skis lean against leafless aspens. Where your laughter bursts from broken snowballs, and a fire waits to warm our mittened hands.

There are rows and rows of fresh tilled earth where every spring you and daddy made a garden, where your hands tirelessly pulled up weeds to keep them from choking growth. And I see you diligently, devoutly weeding the spiritual garden of our home.

There are sunlit trails meandering through our summers where saddles squeak and the soft nickering of horses greet a Sunday sunrise. Where saddle bags are loaded with the lunch you prepared to be shared on Red Ridge peak, and the call to war of “apple core” was greeted with a chorus of “Baltimore” before the remains of the snack were launched at the elected “friend.”

And now there will forever be the fall. When meadows have shed their purple penstemon and ginger Castilleja no longer brush the hills. When the fracture of friable leaves beneath my feet will remind me of the gray November day when you were drawn away.

I whisper to the heavens, “I love you, Momma.” and your echo wraps around me, warm as arms, “Loved you first, love you most.”

November 22, 2024

Because beautiful memories should be kept in a poem

...for Kelly Rutt

Before she knew cancer was eating her ovaries,

before her body could no longer fight

the war that raged in her cells,

she gifted me a compass

set in a hexagon block of inlaid wood.

Black face with white degree increment lines

and N E S W in bold, kelly green…

bold…

Kelly.

There is a crimson arrow

resting right above N

always seeking true north,

pointing to a path that

leads me back home,

but I must choose

to look,

to learn,

to follow…

truth-seeker,

truth-teller,

way-finder.

She walks with me in my dreams,

arm warm across my shoulder…

the same shoulder she once worked

the knots out of as we soaked at Goldbug,

telling me I carry too much…

now a memory brought to life

on a ruminant night.

She reminds me, hands are instruments

of healing and lifting,

for expressing joy and gratitude,

but become useless when filled

with too many burdens,

when we carry too much.

We don’t need a compass

as we wander thin places,

gathering memories like bouquets

of forget-me-not,

and we are never lost here

long enough.

April 12, 2023

Laurel

Small Roughnesses

I washed my sheets today and hung them to dry outside in the sun, just like you used to do, clipped with wooden pins to a plastic line. 

They hung like white flannel flags of surrender waving at the Arizona heat. And I remembered why you preferred line-dried towels. How you said they smelled of summer and loved the small roughness of fibers that had not been softened by modern conveniences. 

Today, I thought that tomorrow will be four weeks without you, yet every day there's something of you filling the small moments of my day.

Dec 14, 2024

Laurel

A Thin Place

I saw the flicker  

where time escaped 

through a crack 

in the black 

of your pupil 

An unraveling spiral 

of triskelion gathered

what was buried 

long ago 

in the limestone 

of Kinbane. 

The recoil 

snatching at memories 

buried in sand and stone 

and the salted scent 

of Lag na Sassenach 

fogged a thin layer of sweat

in the heat between us.

When the pupil of night 

gathers starlight 

in a Colorado sky

My dreams walk 

the labyrinth of Dara knots.

I touch you again

and time rewinds 

through tangles of fate 

green threads spilling 

from the hands of Urðr.

June 30, 2024

Between Times

She writes to me: We only go back as far as our hearts allow*

And a dream of celtic knots tied between two draws me back to a memory of walking through Stones of Destiny, my bare feet sinking into the cool grass of Hill of Tara. 

I return to the scene of the climb**

the assemblage of all my deamons dancing 

like dandelion seeds adrift in dust devils 

The way his voice scooped them away, caught them one-by-one and exchanged them for the pieces of my soul held in Duma na nGiall. 

I sit on the mound, 

listen to Nantes promise to gamble fright away 

watch a field of rapeseed bloom yellow just across the hedge

and I feel the hand of wind brush away the years… 

The vision fades with the stars into a flannel grey sky

and I rise early

watching the things that only come out at night go back to bed***

Laurel 

June 13, 2024

Nods to *Dorothy M, **Brion B, and ***Scott G