A poet started talk of a celebration of words. We need a festival where poets can read and others can listen, she said. And she was right. Silver City, New Mexico, about an hour and a half from Mexico, about three hours from Tucson, in the shadow of the Gila Wilderness, should pay more attention to words. Silver City, when the wind is not blowing, likes silence.
We have art galleries, peaceful places that you love to enter to feel the color and light washing about. We have trails that take you to overlooks where sky and mountain meet and you turn from left to right to take in the vista. And vistas are silent.
But poets and prose writers deserved some moments when words are stirring. The poet recognized that need and gathered her friends. As such things go in Silver City, where orbits cross and dissimilars clump, lovers of words from Western New Mexico University, from the public library, from the town museum, from the lifelong learning program talked and talked and talked.