Louisa Calio

Louisa Calio is an award winning writer and photo artist. She won the 2013 first prize from the City of Messina, Sicily,  4^th 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.