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Poetic Micro Essays

This column features Tripod Poems, poetic micro essays inspired by three randomly chosen words. These words become the title of the piece, are contained within the piece and are developed into observations on life in the Southwest and beyond.


Essence – Remedy – Counter-balance

What is fundamental nature,
the core quality of home;
of feeling at home,
of embodying querencia?

Merriam-Webster defines home
as, “a congenial environment.”

Home, I would hope,
is a place or condition
that compensates
for the harshness
of the larger world,
provides a remedy
for daily tribulation.

Home is not static,
not a placard painted
with a platitude.

Life is unpredictable,
the tender balance
of loss and gain
a perpetual pendulum.

Querencia, that essence
of belonging in a place,
is the best counter-balance
to the constant sway
of turbulent experience.

I deeply relate
to the unbounded landscapes
of New Mexico.

For a decade,
I have embraced
this majestic state
as the arid color palate
with which to paint
my evolving portrait
of an intimate homeland.

I long to infuse
my perceptions
with the overlay
of being rooted in place,
a potent poultice
of piñon, ponderosa,
distant mesas and
cedar incense.

Dancing along
blended definitions,
I shed my heritage
of mutability and adhere
to the call of being
grounded in awe.


Photo Credit: “Canyon View, Alamogordo,” Eve West Bessier, 2023

Disclaimer:
The views expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Southwest Word Fiesta™ or its steering committee.

Eve West Bessier

Eve is a poet laureate emerita of Silver City and Grant County, New Mexico; and of Davis and Yolo County, California. She served on the steering committee for the Southwest Word Fiesta, and has been a festival presenter. Eve is a retired social scientist, educator, and voice coach. She is a published author, jazz vocalist, photographer and nature enthusiast currently living in Alamogordo, New Mexico.
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We respectfully acknowledge that the entirety of southwestern New Mexico is the traditional territory, since time immemorial, of the Chis-Nde, also known as the people of the Chiricahua Apache Nation. The Chiricahua Apache Nation is recognized as a sovereign Native Nation by the United States in the Treaty of Amity, Commerce, and Friendship of 1 July 1852 (10 Stat. 979) (Treaty of Santa Fe ratified 23 March 1853 and proclaimed by President Franklin Pierce 25 March 1853).

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Mimbres Press of Western New Mexico University is a traditional academic press that welcomes agented and unagented submissions in the following genres: literary fiction, creative non-fiction, essays, memoir, poetry, children’s books, historical fiction, and academic books. We are particularly interested in academic work and commercial work with a strong social message, including but not limited to works of history, reportage, biography, anthropology, culture, human rights, and the natural world. We will also consider selective works of national and global significance.