for J., anniversary of your passing
“How you stand here is important. How you
listen for the next things to happen.”
— William Stafford, from “Being a Person”
Sleep felt better under rain sounds.
Long showers deepened
morning’s colors: aspen in lime green,
spruce closer to blue/black in morning chill,
moist trails darkened toward the falls.
A thin calligraphy of cirrus
above the hills like scripture
turns gold-coral at the seam of dawn,
and in the west the moon is setting
like a polished fossil.
All the best moments of living
have been like this: beauty unearned
and unexpected, just being there
(more fragile with you gone),
drawing out words or no words.
I wait cross-canyon from the small soundless falls;
a whitetail doe appears at tree line, eyeing me deeply:
a tone-darker in shade, with a tone-darker glance.
The slight suction sound her hooves make
at shallow water’s edge
signal c o m e . . . .
Then the soft surge of deeper silence
returning like mist, like eiderdown.
–
Dixie L. Partridge grew up on a farm in Wyoming, and lived for many years along the Columbia River in Washington state.
Her work has appeared widely in national and regional journals. Her first book was Deer in the Haystacks, part of the Ahsata Press series, Poetry of the West. Her second book, Watermark, won the national Eileen Barnes award. Influence of landscape is most often at the root of her writing.
© 2026, Dixie L. Partridge
Halfway Down the Stairs 