SANTA FE FALL AND FOOTHILLS

                      -for Dorothy and Devey

 

I.

Intense blue sky

museum-quality cotton clouds

custom-ordered

 

bright sun on yellow-turned cottonwoods

shined brilliance

nearbypinons and outcrop formations

stand relief

in additional dimension

 

pumpkins, Day of the Dead murals

backdrop of mountains

ski runs soon to be populated

 

 

II.

Fine fall evening

snacks, then a light dinner

at twilight, patio fire

in the chiminea

 

Flames flick up

pick up speed to full-bore,

darkness descends

and temperatures drop

 

The heavens a nighttime sky

so full of stars

they bump into one another

 

Sparks lick a black sky

shade into stars,

then back down to wherever

we started in the first place

Richard Dixon is a long-time transplant from the coal mines of southwestern Pennsylvania who lives in Oklahoma City.  A retired high-school special education teacher and tennis coach, he works part-time at a municipal tennis center, where he is known to string a mean racquet. 

He has had poems and essays published in Crosstimbers, Westview, Uncle Walt’s Corner of The Long Islander, the 2012 Texas Poetry Calendar, as well as numerous anthologies, including the two Woody Guthrie compilations Travelin' Music (2011) and Elegant Rage (2012).  He has been a featured reader at Full Circle Bookstore in OKC, the Benedict Street Marketplace in Shawnee and the Norman Performance Center at the Depot.

He came to writing by way of a dairy farm.