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Aspen Grove
Charles Finn
She chose to love all the world. The yellow aspen leaves rattling the air, sunlight leoparding the ground. There were the altruistic flowers, and the wind a longtime coming. All afternoon she’d sit with the purling stream a tickle in her ear, the blue sky so far, far away. In ones and twos she’d watch the aspen leaves release, twist, and sashay to the ground, watch the shadows stepping like cats from beneath the stones. At her feet coyote scat, and by the water the hoofprints of deer like tiny heartbeats pressed into the mud. Yes, night would come, winter would come, but she stayed, dreaming the world into the one she wanted. Call her any name you want: sister, daughter, mother, grandmother; savior, friend, champion, hero.
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Charles Finn is the former editor of the literary and fine arts magazine High Desert Journal, author of Wild Delicate Seconds: 29 Wildlife Encounters and, with photographer Barbara Michelman, author of On a Benediction of Wind: Poems and Photographs from the American West, winner of the 2022 Montana Book Award. With Kim Stafford, he is co-editor of the poetry textbook The Art of Revising Poetry: 21 U.S. Poets on their Drafts, Craft, and Process. A self-taught woodworker and wood artist, he is the owner of A Room of One’s Own as well as FINNFURNITURE & ART, where he builds micro-cabins, furniture, and wood sculptures using reclaimed lumber and materials. He lives in Havre, MT, with his wife Joyce Mphande-Finn and their two cats Tija and Rilke.
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