Meet ROBERT BROWN of Write On Chapter

Robert Lynn Brown spent most of his pre-college years on the family dairy farm/cattle ranch in So. Arizona, where he learned to love livestock, physical labor, and life.  He earned an MA degree in Spanish literature and linguistics from BYU. After teaching high school Spanish and English for 10 years in Arizona, he joined the Foreign Service of the US Information Agency and spent the next decade directing English teaching and cultural exchange programs for the US embassies in Iraq, Colombia, and Indonesia.  During this period, he also served intermittently as a traveling specialist in the teaching of English as a foreign language, directing seminars for local teachers in Argentina, Ecuador, Mexico, Brazil, and Vietnam.  He continued his 30-year Foreign Service career in diplomatic positions in Brazil, Mexico, and Nicaragua, plus a variety of administrative functions in Washington, DC, retiring in 1995. Eighteen of his poems have won recognition in church, state, and national competitions. In 2012 Robert published a 300-page book of poetry entitled RHYMES and REASON. He’s now a member of Word Weavers Chapter in Utah Valley.

THE SUN

The Morning Sun wakes up the Flowers,
the world and me.
It nudges night aside and give me light
so I can see.

The Blazing Noon-Time Sun can burn my skin
and scorch the desert sands.
But that same power provides the warmth
thbat every living things demands.

The Setting Sun brings respite
from my work and cares,
and fills the western skies with coloramas
quite beyond compare.

My Sun gives my day its warmth and light,
its birth,
and everything that grows, its flow.
Its tether also tends the orbit of my earth.

Meet SUE STEVENSON LETH from Utah's Red Rock Country

Sue Stevenson Leth has retired from two separate careers, one in higher education and one in private business.  She and her husband now live permanently in St. George, Utah, loving every blistering moment of summer, monsoon rains, brilliant blue skies, and especially the exquisite endangered specie, Bearclaw Poppy (arctomecon humilis) ripe to bloom at any given moment.

Sue is currently a member and contest clerk for UTSPS, a member of Dixie Poets, Redrock Writers and Co-President of Heritage Writers Guild, the red desert chapter of League of Utah Writers. Her poetry has appeared in Utah Sings, An Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, and the Arizona State Poetry Society, Sandcutters chapbook. She wishes to thank her colleagues in the above mentioned organizations for their polite patient contribution as she endeavors to become a better poet.

Arctomecon Humilis

From the loins of parched hillsides,
an appointed bright green foilage
adorned with white jellied blossoms,
bakes beautiful in sterile ravines.   

Seeds spore to distend roots

that cling and claw the
crusty dry crevices
of barren desert reserve.

Counted and numbered,
tagged with entitlement,
I find rapture in the endangered
specie of the Bear-Claw Poppy. 

Meet LENORE MADDEN of Dixie Poets

Lenore retired last May from several years of teaching high school language arts, AP English Language, and creative writing. As a creative writing teacher, she continually encouraged her students to enter the various poetry contests open to them, usually with excellent results, and attended both the Redrock Writers Seminars and Poetry in the Park, bringing students as often as possible. Being a literature major, she developed a deep and lasting love of poetry in every form, but with a busy teaching schedule, she seldom wrote herself.

Upon retirement, Lenore became a regular member of the Dixie Poets and has grown to truly enjoy that facet of poetry also. While she admittedly still prefers the reading, interpretive and analytical aspects, she feels that her writing is improving with the relaxed, accepting atmosphere she has found among her fellow poets and their excellent critiques. Lenore chaired the Student Division of Chaparral Poetry for the Redrock Seminar this year.

Unquiet Rain

It pounds without mercy,

this unquiet, on the unsuspecting earth,

as unmercifully the deluge continues.

Newly-opened roses languish defeated in the angry red mud.

Summer colors retreat back into their green buds,

seeking the solace of a womb too soon departed.

The burrowers who sought shelter at the

first split in the sky dig, frantic, unknowingly, into their tombs.

The neighbor’s black Labrador wails unheard at the patio door,

quivering as much from the pounding liquid as from the pounding cacophony.

The early heat wave unfairly sired blossoms unready to bloom,

giving a false sense of spring to a dormant land,

awakening fervor this earth is not yet ready for.

In a few months this same land will be parched,

the sensuous red dirt a cracked and dull dun.

But now, in early March, the Southern Utah desert

rages under a relentless beating that brings the recent

mountain spring snow into prematurely swollen lakes and a full river,

a spring setting unprepared for summer’s passion.