Bearlodge Writers

Elizabeth Canfield

Publications:

 

Get To Know Elizabeth

 

Quote

"Pass the chocolate."

Elizabeth Canfield Bio

Elizabeth Canfield is a Wyoming-born ranch woman. Her published works include news reporting, essays, feature stories and editorials, chiefly in this area; some have been published nationally. She has two published chapbooks of poetry. She lives in Sundance, Wyoming where she is a columnist and staff member of the Sundance Times.

Publication Credits

In the Shadow of the Bear Lodge, Many Kites Press, 2006
Insistent Passage, Feathermoon Press,
When the Heart is Reached, Feathermoon Press, 1999

Excerpt of Writing

Artifacts

Old things snag at me-
torn fingernails of gentle ghosts
proof of someone's struggling passage.

In this sparse country
I find tepee rings, broken spearheads
dropped by those who walked this land
so light they scarce left trace
of their tenure.

Frail crystal shards
chips of blue plates
bits of rotted lace
old books
in caved-in cabins deserted long ago.

And I think of
monuments in Southern churchyards
worn illegible by time
stacked graves
in Bermuda’s rationed coral
jungle growth over native fonts
Rome’s Coliseum
Michelangelo’s Pieta.

No assurance of safe harbor—
only echoes of insistent passage…
guidance…awareness that there
was sometimes triumph
on a crowning hill.

 

If a Phoenix Should Rise

Rotted logs, shattered windows, splintered door-
for a hundred years a haven,
now it shelters woodchucks, owls and sparrows-
I found a rattler in the hall.

You said: cows blunder in, die in places
like this. I know. To ease my heart
I salvaged one ridge log
to form a mantel in another home.

Now the ancient shape shows gaunt,
broken-backed against the skyline,
damaged beyond consolation.
Waiting for the fire.

I stand here caught unaware
as open-armed darkness circles,
spirals down. The remembering wind
rises, reaches out to me.

I call up from within ruined walls
echoes of grief, loss, regret,
noble deeds, glorious dreams. Music.
And the asking begins again.

My heart can't seem to learn
what to carry, what to let fall.
A splendid phoenix does not always rise
from ashes.

A splendid phoenix can sometimes rise
from ashes.