One crisp March morning, Colorado-based poet and storyteller Mary Starweather released her debut anthology, In Sight of the Aspen Grove: Poetry from Rist Creek, pairing a telepathic children’s fable with over fifty lyrical poems that span more than two decades of reflection.
Blending mythic fantasy (“S Children’s Story”) with grounded pastoral verse (“Morning Mists, “High Park Fire Poem”), the collection offers readers an immersive, and at times spellbinding, glimpse into the Rocky Mountain foothills and beyond.
From the opening dedication to the family and the land, Starweather situates her work firmly in the Colorado high country: “Thanks go to the land and the nature of the Rocky Mountain foothills,” she writes, grounding reader expectations in sweeping natural imagery before the first poem even starts.
A Children’s Story, dated December 24, 1986, opens the anthology with Jack’s startling discovery that his houseplant communicates telepathically from a distant star. It’s an encounter that triggers a planetary movement to halt environmental destruction. The prose is spare yet evocative: “Jack felt words in his mind without any movement or speech,” and by the story’s end, “Everyone on Earth stopped in their tracks … No one could make the plants stop,” lending a surreal yet urgent moral force to the narrative.
Following the fable, Starweather’s poems unfold almost like journal entries, each date-stamped to chart her evolving voice. In “Morning Mists” (October 12, 1986), six short lines: Morning mists / Sprinkle magic / on my soul,” balance quiet reverie with a brisk sense of time’s passage. By contrast, “High Park Fire Poem” (June 26, 2012) plunges into grief and resilience:
“So Lost
in space…
Time slides
like mud
dragging me along…
The fire, still
raging in the mountains
of my home,
persists in laying
ash over my
spirit.”
This tonal shift, from playful wonder to stark vulnerability, shows Starweather’s range and the anthology’s chronological breadth.
Authors’ Background
Mary Starweather started her life as Mary O’Loughlin. After marrying and moving to Colorado in the early 2000s, she balanced part-time work in school and city recreation departments with daily long walks around that inspired these poems and stories.
Mary Starkweather’s collection feels like a personal journey through time, not just a book. Spanning twenty-five years of her life and blending short fiction with poems about nature, reminds us that slowing down and paying attention to the world around us can still touch our hearts in a busy, online age.
You can now find In Sight of the Aspen Grove: Poetry from Rist Creek as an eBook or in paperback (ISBN 979-8393445119). Whether you want to lose yourself in a single poem or follow Jack’s amazing adventure to protect the plants, this book offers a little calm and wonder you can carry with you.