Ranch Mission Poem by Marj Hahne

A while back I asked our poet laureate Marj Hahne to react to the Colorado Art Ranch mission statement with a poem. Our mission statement reads:

Many of us are looking for ways to understand and address previously unimagined challenges in the world. Colorado Art Ranch believes that the arts, in collaboration with the sciences, can help solve contemporary land and social issues. Our organization strives to nurture the development of literary, visual and performing artists who ask difficult questions through their work; stimulate interdisciplinary collaborations that help envision solution; and build the creative capital in towns throughout Colorado.

It took the board and me only about two months to draft that based on the old version.

Here is what Marj wrote:

Ranch Mission Poem

We are all of two

minds, two

halves of an earth spinning

on the axis of the spine.

When it’s winter, it’s always summer

somewhere else, the seasons a fourfold

way to know the whole

soul of a circle.

A dog chasing its tail.

Capitalism. Forest fires.

Global warming. Rain.

The food chain.

Every man may be an island,

but an island knows it’s part

archipelago;

a mountain knows it’s range;

a grain of sand, desert;

a wave, ocean.

And the ion that begins one thing

is the end of something else, say,

a word: question.

The end of a quest is a question.

Even Leonardo da Vinci knew

his mind wasn’t immutable.

Arte. Sciènza. Connessione. Curiosità.

To keep the feet moving.

To free the Q&A.

To see the Vitruvian Man

in a snow angel.

-Marj Hahne, 2009