Dixie Lee Partridge

Routes For Grieving

Nights of little sleep, now the morning of the switch
from daylight saving time. In the cold before dawn,
the road I follow bends where the river bends,
its curve of mist ghosting upward like a long exhale.

This Quickening: Sleepless, Past Mid-life

In this darkening, you watch the aura
of a northwest sky turn lavender blue.
Waverings of new leaves go quiet,
unused senses seem to be opening.

Night Lines

It was the high Uintas,
evening of our first day-hike
with grandchildren . . . their lives until then
seeming distant, clustered and glowing
as the far Pleiades to our gazing.

Under an Illness of the Moon

No words make a difference
against the child’s cries and damp heat—
only the rocking, rocking,

From Downstream

Whatever landscape a child is exposed to early on, that will be the sort of gauze through which he or she will see all the world afterward.—Wallace Stegner They must have had names. To us…

Letters to the Editor

Noted in the Dark

Some nights here there’ve been singings      the children out into twilight . . . their countings,their hidings, their      ally ally oxen frees.And sometimes the crickets were not sounding bereft      but offered impressions you needed to hear. Now in…

These Are the Hours

when birds disappear taking strips of light      folded in feathersnight insects ready themselves      for meals from leaves of rose and raspberrythe hollow by the lane      pools with evening like waterno moonrise cool radiance      but night…

Vantage: Hoback Rim to Wind River

Closed to drift most of the year,trails descend through short lives of wildflowersbright in colonies, August air verging on frost,its thin metallic edge:snow squalls visible aheadwhere a continent divides.Life stays steep. Nothing in the view…

The Days Between—After Leaving Our YoungestAt College

It’s turning fall in this long alley of young trees,poplar leaves still and golding in deep shade.You see no one and hear not even birds. But the pale trunks together seem to humlike choir rows,…

Nocturne, October

The chapel dark, organ pipes glow 
moon-silver. Silence 
is filled: after-ripples, 
the aura of living tones, 
Bach, Handel. 

On Seeing Part of a Cast Iron Stove, Rusting Behind a Shed

We didn’t know they were hard times, 
            even though that winter they had to borrow our hoard:
            seven dollars from me and five from my sister. 
            Our days were the usual homemade loaves, 
            peaches we’d bottled, our own half-beef in the locker, 

Luggage

You are required to keep the poundage low: 
two large cases and a carry-on: 
what you take for months overseas. 
In a year of famine, you have volunteered 

Abandoned Farmyard, November

Today I saw near a barn 
the bed and crossbar of an old hayrack, 
sunk into earth like the hull of a boat, 
a dying thistle bloom grown out 

Cliff Dwellings

Here, rock has a soft face
and wind moves above like spirit.
I listen down the long slant
of switchback trails, steps carved
where red rock accordions through the canyon.

One of the Women

One of the women inside me 
cannot rejoice with anyone. 
She stays in the shadows 
bowing her head. 
Her long hair has never been cut. 

Words for Late Summer

Cornmeal, dusted over these loaves 
like pollen. And I wish again 
for the old unwritten recipes: brown breads, 
chicken baked in a wrap of cornmeal, 
family reunion picnics I can’t match 
with my own. 

One Sunday’s Rain (After Word of My Father’s Illness)

All morning: rainwater 
off the roof onto pebbles 
washed smooth of pale soil 
in the garden. 

Night Myths

Sleepless with fever, 
under one small lamp you stared 
at a cherry wood cabinet, dark whorls 
spiraled like galaxies and polished 

Notes for a Son, 19, Living Abroad

Often when entering sleep 
I start awake, your form having drifted 
into vision, your name embedded 
in the thickness of my tongue. 

Breadcrumbs

The fairytales were wrong: 
to identify big feet 
with wicked stepsisters, ugly with unloved, 
princes and frogs with anything 

Leave of Absence

walk out and arrive 
near the lake— 
any route taken 
leads eventually 
to this 

Movements Giving Off Light

Drops of water stretch and hold 
in the sunlight: the small icicle 
sways from the eaves in the thaw. 
I see it fall 
because I have come to the window 
at this moment. 

RELEASE: A Moment

I did not plan survival or otherwise 
            craving absence for so long 
so when awakened that snowless night 

Saturday: One Version (Fourth Week of an Unidentified Illness)

Tired of enclosure, I sit near what view 
of trees and sky my house will give. 
Across the back fence, my neighbor 
who can hardly walk 

Bread: A Returning

In the hayfields are loaves 
to be lined along barns. 
Like monuments to a lost art 
they have browned in the summer heat, 

Descending Order

Snow falling into the pond 
leaves you weak with its metaphor 
of sadness, as though all that makes you
could be instantly broken down, 

Moon Phases: Childhood

when it topped the mountains 
the shell of moon laid down 
            such plenty 
                        all over the fields 

Mountain Turn-out: Week After My Father’s Funeral

In the ghost-smoke of eight thousand feet, 
the road back looks deserted. 
Below me, a hawk rises, 
wings throbbing stillness, and I watch 

“Watercress Grows Best in Running Water”

Days after his death, I felt him 
newly jovial alongside me. And weeks later,
when I again dreamed him young, 
handing me a pail of watercress, 

After a Late Night, Waiting

Again, that rim before sleep: 
            I tried to pause there—listened 
to the mantle clock, the distant 
            sprung rhythm of a dog barking, 

Afterward

Once on the porch I asked 
great-grandfather Porter a question 
loudly and he said wait 
though he was just sitting still 
his face raised to low sun 
eyes half-open 

Above the Estuary (Before the trail closure through Cascade Preserve)

The river’s long curve 
enters the bay in streak between meadow 
and forest—algae green of freshwater, 
kelp green of salt. 

Night Light

With a neighbor who couldn’t tolerate light, 
I took stairs in the dark, 
felt for knobs and shapes 
of cabinets in windowless rooms. At home, 

Night Work Near Escalante

After dawn we hike through fine rain, 
but the light is good, only slight 
cellophane distortion as we look through 
at trees and stream, box canyon walls 

Movement: Out of Doors, Out of Town, In Dangerous Times

To that lit spot ahead 
is as far as you’ll walk: 
open green, bounded by pale shrubs 
you can’t name, sky 
in clabbery cloud, light blue showing through. 
Storm coming, your father would say. 

The Riverbank, Late Winter: Living North

A lined calendar of empty trees 
turns the cold 
consolable. Even light this dim 
is an invitation. 

The Fall of My Fiftieth Year

Winter already edging down 
from mountain passes, I walk past 
our first town cemetery, filled with upright 
markers and gold-red trees. 
It’s had no vacancies for years. 

Eighteen Thousand Sundowns

Near a rock slope of hill pasture, 
grass grows up through a few old bones. 
Again, what’s moved past recall 
is not past pain. White as the noon-day 

Reading into Dusk

On the wood porch I awake 
to no sound, but a sense of some change: 
light falls across an arm and 
I pull back into darkness. 

After My Brother’s Remission

When dawn comes this early, 
a slice of sky visible from my bed 
textures waking. Today’s thin layers clabber 
white . . .

Some with Shadows

A day of long-walked silences, 
waterless red gullies and hard-rock 
plateaus. We’ve met few on the trails 
this summer past my father’s dying. 

While Planting Hollyhocks

In the dim green 
I can’t tell what I’m remembering, 
or what’s been handed down. . . .

White Rain (forty years since our meeting)

We wake to cold, though it’s mid-spring, 
so silent at sunrise 
we both raise the pleated blinds 
and look out: everything a shock 
of ice . . . each draped petal and twig 
from weeping cherry, wire on the chain link 
fence—evenly glazed and still. 

Flying Out

This morning makes no shadow, compresses 
with its grayness and that knot 
I learned to grow against winter 
long ago in Wyoming. 

Time Being: Lakeside, after Leaving Our Youngest at College

Again the curlew calls its name. 
Where we’ve camped over years, 
the sky has already distanced itself 
from the heat press of summer, 
the lakeshore fluent 
with ridges only seasons of water can scroll. 

In This Version of Autumn

It’s as if the fields of five decades 
have been broomed clean—dry as straw. 
But in the border woods, ground holds scent: 
leaf-humus and pine, 
an after-hint of smoke, or ash. 

Vitae

Lost stories stir up with the dust, 
accented in Swedish: the voyage 
and train rides bringing Grandmother west; 
another linking Grandpa Lee’s drowning 

Visible from Here

I put down the phone and stare at nothing, 
everything of my farm past settled into a moment
like colors pushed back through a prism 
gone singular and clear: 

Dark Energy

Mathematicians say the universe is a leaking wonder
of heat and cold: immense pressures 
sucking and exhaling, not elegant 
as they’d imagined . . . “preposterous.” 

Shade

Only the north slopes grew pines 
above the rocky hillside farm, 
and we sought shelter there in our climbings. 

Evenings in October

It’s the Schubert piece that does it . . .  
tonight you are moved into the dark to come  
where white roots are suddenly remembered,  
growing beautifully out of soil walls of a cellar  
gone half a century . . . white roots  

Not Far Off Trail, Late Summer

Where deep water widens and silks past 
the river island, you move through tall grasses  
downhill riverside, crouch through overhang  
and find yourself beneath a great  
low catalpa, broad leaves