Montana transplant Catharine Dombrovske travels far and wide in her collection of poems, from British Columbia and the rugged coast of California, through the arid Southwest to her home on the Rocky Mountain Front.
“It was so cold last night/ the waves froze on the lake” she writes from Argenta, BC; and in Chacon, NM, “silent lightning flares from secret wars behind the horizon.” She finds a white egret, “sun playing on your/ wings of blowing snow,” in northern California, and “the burning bitten gold arc/ sinks beneath the canyon” in eastern Utah. The Sangre de Cristo mountains are drenched with the blood “of Apache, conquistador/ Penitente lamb/ New Age dreamer/ and seeker from the cities …”
She encompasses much of Montana too, from Glacier Park to Badger Creek, Virginia City to the Tobacco Roots. Her travelogue is often more internal than external … a journey of spirit, spanning four decades. Prayer, in the form of poems: “each note a weapon/ a laser/ to pierce the brutal heart of doubt …”
The author, who has worked as cook, legal secretary, deputy clerk of court in Virginia City and elementary teacher on the Fairfield Bench, is now retired to her pottery studio in Augusta. Former Montana Poet Laureate Tami Haaland writes that her “fine poems investigate the quiet mystery of western landscapes and celebrate the wild places that provide us with inspiration and rest.”
– Kristi Niemeyer