Listening to the Land: Poetry and the Land

Abstract

Last January I received a request from Karen Launchbaugh to write a verse to be used as an invocation at the banquet of the Society for Range Management. Poetry is a very special and powerful form of communication. Some people are inspired by it, others are put off by it, and some just plain don’t get it. It comes in many styles. Because my poetry is different from some poetry written and enjoyed by many SRM members, I hesitated. My poems are mostly talking to myself. But I find it hard to reject a request from Karen. I decided, with some trepidation, to write something Octavio Paz might call “a ramble through the night.”