Publisher's Synopsis
In Poems of Spirit and Place, Montana poet Catharine C. Dombrovske invites us to accompany her on her life's walk through the rugged coast of California, the high red rocks of southern Utah, the storied Hispanic villages of New Mexico's Sangre de Cristo, and on to her current home at the foot of the spectacular Rocky Mountain Front of Montana. Catharine's poems follow her experiences in the vast and far flung reaches of the American West. With intimacy and immediacy, she explores the Soul of Place as it is molded by the forces of nature and the beings who live and have lived within place, time and the human imagination. Sometimes her impressions are sensory, light, and momentary: "my face startled by sudden droplets, the play of tiny fingers on my sunburned forehead"; at others, she vividly senses the infinite hand of ongoing Creation, as she joins with it to co-create her world. Or she takes an almost shamanistic direction, becoming one with "space and age/ cliff, wind and cedar." Throughout, her poems are imbued with a living spirituality. Join Catharine and the occupants of her world - canyon wrens, Bigfoot, golden eagles, mariposa lilies, gnarled old junipers, living mountains and canyons, snoozing cats, and sandhill cranes - as they journey through the maze of nature's mystery and beauty; all expressed in language that is lyrical, transparent and clear.