The Blizzard Rope

by Debra Marquart

This is Michael Carey for Voices from the Prairie a weekly sampling from the rich soil of Iowa’s literary tradition. Today’s poem is "The Blizzard Rope" by Debra Marquart. It is a moving love poem to her deceased father depicting how there has always been this connection between them and how even though he is no longer there, she still holds onto him.

The Blizzard Rope

I have not forgotten,
ten and still holding
the blizzard rope you tied
around my waist, winter
of sixty-six. You said,
you are home base,
and stepped out
into weather. Snow

like a house built
around us. Holsteins
holding their milk
in the hungry barn.
You had no choice.
The straight path
you walked every day
a mystery, in this weather.
I have not forgotten,
thirty-three and holding
the blizzard rope.

White-out, you step out.
Your fine hands
climbing weather. The line
has grown icy.
The weather worsens.
I am home base.
Go where you will.

"The Blizzard Rope" by Debra Marquart from Everything’s a Verb published by New Rivers Press.

For Voices from the Prairie and Humanities Iowa, this is Michael Carey hoping you continue to hear the music blooming all around you.

Biography

Debra Marquart is an assistant professor of English, poetry editor of Flyway Literary Review and the coordinator of the Creative Writing Program at Iowa State University. Her poetry collection Everything’s a Verb was published by New Rivers Press in 1995. She is a collaborating member of a jazz-poetry, rhythm & blues project, The Bone People, with whom she released two CDs in 1996: Orange Parade, a CD of acoustic/alternative rock; and A Regular Dervish, a jazz-poetry spoken word CD which is a companion disc to Everything’s a Verb. Her short story collection about road musicians, The Hunger Bone, won the 1998 Capricorn Novel Award sponsored by the Westside Y in NYC, and was for published in 2001 by New Rivers Press.

BACK