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.