Patricia Wellingham-Jones
Excerpt from KotaPress Poetry Anthology Volume 3, 2003

High Desert Valley

Wind shadows spill
across high desert valley
where surges of habitation
deposit their spoor.

Circles of stones, knapped
flint mark the first ones.
Then came the pioneers' path -
rotted wood, spent bullets,
graves unnoted for decades.
Miners stripped land, left
rusted metal, decayed streams.

Clapboard skeletons,
steeple, bell
towers show
when women came and stayed.

Near springs and willows
windmills, broken corrals
cluster
around today's aluminum, boxes
breath-gusted,
filled with the next
wave of hope.

Previously published in Tule Review, Summer 1999

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Author Bio
Patricia is a former psychology researcher/writer/editor/lecturer who now writes poetry and short stories. She has been widely published in journals, anthologies and online magazines. She edited River Voices: Poets of Butte, Shasta, Tehama and Trinity Counties, California and Labyrinth: Poems & Prose. Her latest chapbook is Don’t Turn Away: Poems About Breast Cancer.