September 2022
Bio Note: I like to think my father passed his “awe” gene to me. It seems the older I get, the more precious everything becomes. Turning Plow Press published my book, Once Upon a Tar Creek Mining for Voices this past year. Hiking new and old trails in Wisconsin’s Kettle Moraine and Oregon’s Wallowa Mountains keeps me in perpetual awe.
Hunger
they are ripening now
these blackberries
that fill my need for family
the way Aunt Maxine
made jam
drooling black sunshine
down my chin
and how today I squirt
one berry
into my waiting mouth
hungry for all the love messaged
in its juice
even after seventy years
The Wizard of Awe
Mt Huxley High Sierras 1956
my father smiles into the camera
ready to take on a world
in all its treacherous ways
a forty-pound pack tight
to his back
a heartbeat tripping wild
in anticipation
sixty years later
he tells a story of thin air
slip-sliding gravel
the last push hugging
a narrow almost straight up
vertical to the top
13,092 feet summit
how he lost his voice
and how altitude can do that
but he always knew
the real why
absolute unflinching
look you straight in the eye
awe
©2022 Maryann Hurtt
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