In Final Reading, Logan Poet Laureate Coulbrooke Presents Love Poem to Logan

In her final sharing as Logan City poet laureate, Star Coulbrooke read “a love poem to Logan City,” evoking such beloved images at “wild roses baby pink and wanton spilling over concrete walls.” 

Coulbrooke presented the poem at the Aug. 20 Logan City Council meeting, which also saw the introduction of the city’s new poet laureate, Shanan Ballam.

Over her five-year tenure as the city’s inaugural poet, Coulbrooke has presented numerous – indeed, hundreds public events, including readings, poetry workshops add school visits. She’s best known, however, for Poetry Walkabouts, where she invited poetry lovers to walk with her to find inspiration in Logan and the canyon’s beautiful but often little known areas.

Coulbrooke is director of the Utah State University Writing Center in the Department of English. Ballam, who like Coulbrooke, has a national reputation as a poet, is a senior lecturer, also in the Department of English.

Coulbrooke earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees at USU, where her mentor was Kenneth Brewer, a USU faculty member who taught poetry and English courses for three decades and later served as Utah poet laureate.

“Love Poem to Logan City” is what Coulbrooke describes as a collaborative, commemorative community poem compiled from lines and words written by participants of the poetry walkabouts of 2018-19.

I

Cradled in the valley a delicate sea 
of color and movement, 
mountains against it, eagles above, 
sun pouring golden yolk, plying 
its honeyed peach, lily pink simmer, 

no wonder we love
descending from canyons, returning 
to sun-lit yards with lilac trees 
and dragonflies, 
burble of water, burble of voices 
familiar in topic and timbre,

no wonder we love 
recounting old memories of rosebushes, 
carrots, a treehouse, wild roses 
baby pink and wanton 
spilling over concrete walls, 
the wind as it drags its silver hair 
of rain across the sky, 

the subterranean reach of aspen root, 
pale boles holding fast the fading light 
as smoke drapes the mountains, 
wreathes gauzy white arms around spires 
and peaks, marries the sky of murky steel blue 
to orange-gold sunset, flames 
licking the sagebrush slopes, 

these rust and coral bones under earth’s skin, 
the glittering sand of our lives, 
this one small moment in time. 

II

Nestled in the center 
of a burgeoning oasis 
fed by its namesake river, 
Logan settles deep in the belly 
of summer, air gone humid 
and thick with ripened berries, 
butterflies in our bellies.

Our hands moving over its surface 
for decades, this place 
formed by time is transformed 
to a heaven of houses and gardens, 
sunlight reflected through the crabapple tree, 
Lily of the Valley wafting 
its secret perfume, tiny blooms 
shining like pearls in the shade. 

With our hands we have harnessed the river, 
petted and parted it, spread its long locks 
over Juniper knolls, turning the sagebrush 
to garden’s random wander, 
sweet pink clover like stars in the grass 
sparkling in high desert sun. 

In a million years, if the river 
is still running in low calm 
or brutal bashing, it will still be speaking 
depths untouched by any of us, 
the tumult and long mean 
lashings of run-off leaving blood-brown 
canes of roses beat by liquid life, 
absorbed by earth. 

Still, we have loved it. Heavy 
with the invincibility of childhood 
we have chiseled and sanded this place 
with patience, shaped it into something new, 
we who’ve learned to listen 
for the thrum of centuries, the high thin 
keening of our vanishing. 

Right here in this moment in all our comforts, 
we do not sink. We lean into it 
in abiding love, our infinite hearts linked. 

III

Logan your story is set in stone, 
geologic in scope, filled with curious things, 
granite chips culled from abandoned 
quarries buffed into smooth glossy shine, 
sandstone cliffs embracing in the sunset, 
humans hungering for gold. 

We are chinking in the slats of your house 
blown open by the crush of time, 
our stories passed on in the color of hair, 
noses, long fingers, our selves passed down 
with words pulled from the family graveyard 
and a feeling too big to contain, 
stories to make us immortal. 

We stand in our too short time, each 
generation holding the next one steady, 
holding energy, the power to heal. 
Like crystals frozen deep in time, 
we arise fresh and new from the mantle, 
resplendent with the light of day. 

Logan your atmosphere tingles electric, 
dawn light and leaves atremble, 
catharsis etching your soul. Against all odds, 
hope spreads like truth reflected 
in a pond, like two crows making love 
in an overhead pine bough, like a bridge 
made of rope and slats. 

From canyon to canyon we cross 
the high suspension, surprised 
that our hearts are so loud. 

(Multiple people contributed to this poem.)