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.