Louisa Calio
Louisa Calio is an award winning writer and photo artist. She won the 2013 first prize from the City of Messina, Sicily, 4th international poetry competition for her poem “Bhari” and was a finalist for Poet Laureate of Nassau County in 2013 and winner of the Connecticut Commission of the Arts award for an Individual writer . Her latest book, Journey to the Heart Waters, was published by Legas Press in 2014. She is on the Advisory Board of Arba Sicula, an active member of Italian American Writers Assoc. Italian American Studies Assoc.and former Director of the Poets and Writers Piazza for Hofstra’s Italian Experience for 12 years. She has a BA in English, magna cum laude, from SUNY Albany with special honors in English and Masters from Temple University.
Cofounder and first Executive Director of City Spirit Artists, Inc. a non- profit arts organization in New Haven, Ct. she has spent her lifetime committed to bringing the Arts to divergent communities. Her writings appear in numerous anthologies, journals and books including GRADIVA, The Journal of Italian Translation, Voices of Italian Americana, New Verse News, Studia Mystica, She is Everywhere, darkmother, Remembrances, Sweet Lemons 2, etc. To learn more go to Wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louisa_Calio
Sky Openings - Rocky Mountains
by Louisa Calio
High in the Rockies I walked
While you remained in the desert
I reconstructed in post cards
What I could not send
The presence
I felt looking across cold crystal lakes
The quiet passing of a canoe
I thought I saw Chingachgook and his wife
Peering from behind those trees
As I danced down paths of leaves
To hidden tom-toms
Dreaming American Indian dreams
On once virgin lands.
You were a highlander
Exiled to the desert
Hoping for some rain to fall
I walked the mountains
Walked the mountains
Doing an ancient Indian rain dance.