Wednesday, June 20, 2018

Meet Debra Csenge of Willow Wind Poets


Debra Csenge writes, paints, and grows vegetables in Kanab, Utah. She left her former home in Maine over 10 years ago, and now hikes the trails of southern Utah. She holds a bachelor’s degree in studio art which she received as a “non-conventional” student in 2004. She has worked as a self-employed furniture maker and upholsterer, for the outdoor company LL Bean in Freeport, Maine, and as a library assistant at Kanab City Library. She now thoroughly enjoys her retirement.
She started writing poetry as a young woman, and then took it up again about 10 years ago. She has been published by Green Horizon Quarterly (Topsham, Maine) and by Red Rock Review, now called Kanab Arts Magazine (Kanab, Utah). She has performed her poetry, along with other local poets, at the Amazing Earthfest, a weeklong celebration of public lands based in Kanab, Utah for the past 12 years.
Sunset
Feathery branches
Dark against peach glowing clouds
And patches of surprising pale cerulean.
The sunset
And this expansiveness
Pushes aside my small thoughts
And busy circuitry.

I am clear and still,
     Like the tree branches.
     Like the red cliffs.
     Like the sky windows
Into infinity.

I linger gratefully
To drink at the well
Of inner silence.
My small struggles
And my knowing
Of the great losses
Dissolve in this sweet moment.

There is nothing
That triggers this reverie
Like dark trees
Against the sun’s
Parting gift
Of pure expanding deep.