SageGreenJournal.org

voices out of the West, mostly poetry, personal to planetary

David Chorlton

Phoenix, Arizona

David writes: "I live with a European past, replete with memories of art galleries plus a love of music, and a present rooted on the Southwest desert. Most of my learning has come from reading across a broad spectrum of poetry, and my writing has edged a little more toward the natural world as "nature poetry" no longer has the reassuring and bucolic implications it had when I was at school. Readings are always a special events for me, and I'd go so far as saying that a poem read aloud is in its final draft."

David Cholton reading

accompanied by his wife Roberta

David's books include:Bird on a Wire(Presa Press, 2017),A Field Guide to Fire(FutureCycle Press, 2015),Selected Poems(FutureCycle Press, 2014),The Devil's Sonata (FutureCycle Press, 2012),Waiting for the Quetzal (March Street Press, 2006),Return to Waking Life(Main Street Rag, 2004),A Normal Day Amazes Us (Kings Estate Press, 2003),and Forget the Country You Came From (Singular Street, 1992)

David received The Slipstream Chapbook Award (2009) for The Age of Miracles and The Ronald Wardall Prize from Rain Mountain Press (2008) for for the chapbook manuscript, The Lost River.

The Way to the Gray Hawk

David Chorlton

Clouds well up into a chorus of light

above summer hills

stripped to their contours

by each peal of thunder

that rolls across them as sound

casting a shadow.

 In the tangles

of birdsong along every trail

through ash and mesquite

the hard throated call

from a cuckoo keeps up

an insistent tease until

slender wings flash

where they glide into view

for a second and away to where time

cannot reach.

 The way is marked

by the hallucinogenic glow

on the sacred petals

of Datura growing at the intersection

of reality and delirium.

 Leaves pull

together; the sky is held in trust

all the way along the path the erstwhile

railway ran, where now

the trees leave space

only for its memory to pass

between them, followed by

a raven’s call.

 Still far to go

and the sun is low

as edges rich in color draw the shapes

of cottonwoods within them.

 Another day;

the grass is wet and darkness

turns into a heron on the creek,

gone in a wingflap

leaving green behind in overlapping

shades past fallen trunks

whose textures of decay

lie richly on the earth,

and farther along the circuitous way

leading into and out of

the secrets that grow

in riparian shade, the search continues

with no end in sight.

 Looking up,

ever up high among the tall and leaning

boughs, some broken

and some twisted, some tapering

to a dead point with no foliage,

some holding a nest, leads only to

the clear blue beyond

all that is known, until

 a Gray Hawk's cry

is a fingernail scraping across

the sky.

RETURN TO TOP >

SageGreenJournal.org is a non-commercial project, an online anthology, to share a poetic vision of the land we love.

We have no permanent office although we do have deep roots in western Colorado.

You can write us at Box 160 Norwood CO 81423, or better yet, email us, by clicking 

or, if you use a webmail system, write to hello (at) sagegreenjournal.org