Collected River Poems by Gregory Hobbs

Whitewater Rafting And then . . . there’s Evening

when the sinews

of the working river

begin to glow . . .

soothing the muscles

of the gritty row women—

out of the shadows settling into

cottonwood groves,

bowstring on  bowstring,

from some cavern recess high above—

the sauce of a cradled violin

licks fire . . . into every pore

of every creature

canyon rim to canyon rim

By Gregory Hobbs, Yampa River Trip

There's Evening poem

Gregory Hobbs has been doing river trips with Holiday since 2006. He has gone on six river trips with us.

 

Sewing Kit Chock Full of a Few Silly Rules!

Sewing Kit Chock Full of a Few Silly Rules

Gregory Hobbs

Pack good!

Play fair!

Listen up!

Have fun!

Hang on tight when the Captain says so!

 

Stay hydrated!

Look out for each other!

Respect the critters!

Love the River!

 

Don’t lose your sewing kit!

 

COFFEE! COFFEE! COFFEE!

 

Day begins on the river with birdsong,

resurgent willows, cliffs and shadows,

surging sun poking through a notch

in a butte face, Coffee! Coffee! Coffee!

french toast and bacon.

 

Down come the overnight habitats,Sewing Kit Chock Full of a Few Silly Rules

ingeniously rigged and shaped to embrace

the sleepers dotted about this beach

washed a grain at a time from the West Elks,

Eagle Nest-Gore, the Never Summers

and countless unnamed washes and arroyos

contributing redrock sediment of ocean eons.

 

We are off and away, a striped cucumber-

looking bug alights on my left arm, climbing

towards my elbow feeling his way through

the filament forest of my limb, I flick him

in the direction of the tamarisk grove

he and his fellow beetles are defoliating

in favor of the resurgent willow sharp tooth

beavers cut their lodges out of, see

their dragging chutes plowing down

the sandy banks.

 

A Cooper’s Hawk on river right watchesSewing Kit Chock Full of a Few Silly Rules

us navigate the shallows.  Noon’s a hike

to granaries of the gone Ancient Ones

who’ve left hands imprinted on a cliff

face wall, a boy and his mother or

father and daughter waving welcome

 

Feathery hands bridging a thousand

years of river flow (thundering at times)

that languidly turns another today as

in the river we drift this hot afternoon

tucked in life preservers bobbing past

a row of shoreline judges rating our

water ballet!

 

Guides David, Julian, L.B., T.J. andSewing Kit Chock Full of a Few Silly Rules

Christian make it possible for us

to be here, no plug ins,

just the current of the Colorado

bearing us on.

 

(With Holiday Expeditions, Moab through

Cataract Canyon to Hite, June 23-27, 2012)

 

Greg Hobbs

 

 

Yampa River Flower

Colorado Firmament

In the grotto of the starship columbine

sprinkled amongst the crags and crevices,

 

rooted in the Morgan formation

between Round Valley sandstone

 

and the Weber sandstone,

the two-layered Morgan blends

 

where ledges slide into the young

meandering free-flowing Yampa.

 

(On the Yampa through Dinosaur)

Greg Hobbs 6/17/2013

 

Blessing Of The Rings

By Gregory Hobbs

Blessing of the Rings

Photo by Gregory Hobbs

 

Toss a pebble in a pool,

random concentric circles migrate

from the source of all-encompassing.

 

From these beginnings these circles

have no endings, traveling through

space and time on a raft passing through

prehistoric sand dunes hung with spider

webs, swallow nests, and Moki steps.

 

Two seeds fall into a niche

and two ponderosa grow side by side,

who or when or why or how are paired

in the where of the CanyonLands.

 

Heart and source,

soul and reason,

love ripples.

 

Gregory Hobbs has been doing river trips with Holiday since 2006. He has gone on six river trips with us, but the only one he returned for was the Cataract Canyon trip in Canyonlands National Park. I think it’s safe to say, based off this poem and his return trip, that Cataract may have been his favorite trip.