In The Poem ‘Always Somewhere,’ An Ode To Snow-Capped Rocky Mountains

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Brennan Linsley/AP Photo
<p>Fresh snow covers the mountain peaks east of Frisco, Colo., Saturday Oct. 5, 2013.</p>
Photo: Rocky Mountains Snow
Fresh snow covers the mountain peaks east of Frisco, Colo., Saturday Oct. 5, 2013.

One of the best parts about winter in Colorado is the sight of snowy mountains. Western Slope Poet Laureate and Western Colorado University creative writing professor David Rothman was inspired to write an ode to the Rockies in winter. "Always Somewhere" is a must-read for fans of snow-capped peaks.

"Always Somewhere" by David Rothman

Somewhere in the dark is always mountains,

Years in mountains, mountains silent, standing

Inscrutable, big, rocky, piercing, sheer,

And hills, wrinkled and rippling, calling clear

Across their time, symbolic, real, and branding

Reality as cities boast a downtown.

Always somewhere in the air is snow

Of every kind, light, drifted, melting, deep

Especially, its liquid energy

Released come spring stored temporarily

Upon the mountains as through time they keep

Faith with cold nights where the foxes bark and roam.

Somewhere always is an everywhere

Where the mountains and the snow grow down

In time, until, in winter's deep sleep, time

Grows balanced, and in quiet you can climb

A mountain and the snow no one can own

Because in afternoon sunshine, time's there.

Always in this somewhere life was skiing,

Riding on and through each, every storm

As if forever in a glorious seeming

Of time down mountains where the quick snow streaming

Invited the world's body to perform.

Could anything have ever been more freeing?

So when it's taken, with our words and seeing,

Let these words stand: now that was time and being.