Welcome to Twila Wood who is the new Chapter president of
Hinterlands-a friendly group of UTSPS poets who connect via the Internet. (Thanks
to Margaret Pettis who began this unique chapter several years ago.) Twila grew
up on a dairy farm in Wellsville, Utah, where she learned to love the land,
animals and the mountains next to her home.
She graduated from Utah State University with a degree in English. After
teaching piano lessons for 20 years and school for 25 years-9th
grade English, speech and drama at North Cache, she retired in 2016 and has
been able to more fully enjoy her hobbies of writing, piano and reading, along
with her love of hiking, camping and boating.
With various poems and personal essays published in local newspapers and
books, including “Her Touch” in Mothers
of Faith published by Covenant
Communications, Inc, she won two
first place awards and two honorable mentions in the UTSPS Poetry Contest last
April 2018. Twila is excited to be part of a society who shares the unique passion
of poetry.
Winter Birch
by Twila Wood
When
snow draped
our
front birch in cotton candy,
stacked
cold sugar upon each limb,
I’d
swing one drooping branch
for
a shower of dazzling powder,
sprinkling
my face with magic
of
a million tiny diamonds.
At
night she froze
into
a white-haired ghost,
floating
in the brittle air outside
my
bedroom window. Wind weaved
through
her icy tresses in tinkling
chimes,
moon beams peeked
through
her strands in chilling glow.
Her
frosted waterfall sparkled
through
the morning fog;
by
noon, her explosion
stunned
the blue sky. Graceful
crystals
clung to her branches
like
dainty pinwheels, spinning
enchantment into winter.
