Vintage Colorado Poetry Poem of the Week December 27, 2004 thru January 2, 2005

Dusk. Courtesy of City of Fort Collins & Lightworks Photography.

Charles Edwin Hewes wrote several hundred poems about Rocky Mountain National Park, which he collected in cumulative editions of his lifework Songs of the Rockies, from 1914 to 1938.  "Where Does It Go?" is Vintage Colorado Poetry's featured verse for New Year's Eve.

Where Does It Go? The sunshine sweeps over Colorado, Bright, warming, and lustrous its golden flow. "And where does it go?" asks the blackbird so,    Perched on a rush where the reservoirs flow,        Filling the ditches for the crops below. "I know---I know," pipes the meadowlark mellow,    From a telephone wire the wind hums low---        "It goes into the wheat the farmers sow." "Oh, more than that," cries the magpie, "Ho---ho,"    As he wings the ripening fields below---        "It goes in the sugar the big beets grow." "To wit---to w-o-o," hoots prairie owl, "I know,"    As he flits Rocky Flats at night so slow---        "It goes to sleep so I can hunt and stow." "And into the pines," caws the foothill crow,    Sunning himself on a cottonwood bough---        "Which burn at night when the cabin hearths glow." "And into the mines," calls the campbird, "Oh,"    Nodding his head o'er the empty shafts below---       "Filling the holes that they dug long ago." "And into the snow," chirps rosy finch low,    A-top of Longs Peak where the wild gales blow---       "Melting it down till the snowfleas show." "I know---I know," croaks the Front Range raven so,    The wisest of birds that the mountains show---       "It goes into the stars till the roosters crow." And there's a Cosmic truth to folks that know, Both in meadowlark's pipe and rooster's crow; When the sun goes down and the planets show, 'Tis the same Orb that makes both grow and glow.                             --Charles Edwin Hewes Reprinted from Songs of the Rockies by Charles Edwin Hewes. Drawings by Dean Babcock. The Egerton-Palmer Press, Hewes-Kirkwood, Allenspark, Colorado. Copyright (c) 1938, Charles Edwin Hewes. Fair Use. Vintage Colorado Poetry would welcome hearing from the family of Charles Edwin Hewes.

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