GRASS VALLEY, UTAH
Out here,
mountains rise
one either side
of the valley.
Spring breeze.
Morning choir
of songbirds.
Harmony.
Some long-broken part of me
has been made whole again.
I felt it—
just now.
ARIZONA CABIN
Cold morning light
spills over our bed—
enough light to color
the soft curve of her hip.
Fragrance
of fresh-cut pine,
and gentle tired
loving.
Intoxicated
by all that wild love.
Canyonland love.
Desert love.
Love. Love.
Love.
STORM IN PINE CREEK PASS
after Orazio Benevolo’s “Regna terrae”
Thunder and rain
over mountains
in Eastern Idaho.
Elemental choir.
We startle a young bull moose,
the massive hulk of his body
dark with rain.
He vanishes
deeper into the pines,
like a myth
carried
across the kingdoms
of the earth.
ELK SHIT HAIKU
In springtime mountains,
small lavender butterflies
smother the elk shit.
RINGBONE LAKE SUTRA
“All is bliss.”
-Jack Kerouac,
“The Scripture of the Golden Eternity”
All trails eventually end.
Go beyond them.
Take hidden paths
up to wild places
where elk, bear, and moose
live out their secret savage lives.
Find this lonely court
of windy prehistoric music—
water, stone,
beast,
and bone.
Oh, yes,
when the trail ends,
keep climbing higher and higher
up glacial moraine—
this Precambrian ruin,
these old bones
of the earth.
Nicholas Trandahl is a poet, journalist, outdoorsman, and U. S. Army veteran. He lives in Wyoming with his wife and daughters. He has had four poetry collections and a novel published. His most recent poetry collection is Mountain Song.
Trandahl’s poetry collection Bravery was the recipient of the 2019 Wyoming Writers Milestone Award, and his poem “Francis and Sistani” was nominated for the 2021 Pushcart Prize. His poems have been published or are forthcoming in various literary journals, including but not limited to the James Dickey Review, Sky Island Journal, High Plains Register, The Dewdrop, Duck Head Journal, Resurrection Magazine, Dreich Magazine, Voices de la Luna, Deep Wild Journal, Wild Roof Journal, and anthologies from Middle Creek Publishing, Wee Sparrow Poetry Press, and the New York Quarterly.
Additionally, Trandahl serves as the Chairman of the annual Eugene V. Shea National Poetry Contest and is the poetry editor for the literary journal The Dewdrop.
RESURRECTION mag 