Meet MAURINE HALTINER of Valley Winds Chapter

Maurine tells us about her life: "A graduate of the University of Utah, I taught English in Salt Lake City for 33 years. I was 2004 UTSPS Poet of the Year with my book A Season and a Time. I also have published a  young adult novel Truth Windows, spotlighting Utah’s Sanpete County. I currently play principal 2^nd violin with the Wasatch Community Symphony Orchestra. I have given poetry readings & presented workshops for UTSPS. As participants in the Artists in the Schools program at West High, my students & I created a young adult novel, Torrents of Spring, a rival to Hemingway’s early book of the same name. For me poetry is word-play with serious intentions, even when those intentions provoke a humorous response—hence “Sprinkler Cliff,” my famous seasonal poem. Following a class at Westminster College taught by Boston poet Jill McDonough, I wrote many blank verse poems. “Night in Monterey” is one of those & one of my favorites." Maurine currently serves as our UTSPS secretary.

Night in Monterey

Releasing darkness from their wings, the crows

appear on cue and cross the sky. Their caws

move west from inland trees to mouth of bay.

The sun, once proud distraction, loses light

below a shift of waves and misty hues

of gold and red. I love these migrant crows

that murder day. Death rides upon their wings. 

No longer blind to sound I hear the night,

how water knows its way, rebukes cold cliffs

as hollow cries from gulls defy the wind.

Between each cuff of waves bold silence knows

itself. The sea holds back. The tern is still.

The crows drop down on trees. A thousand eyes

and muted caws attend this brittle peace.