Margaret Pettis was born in Marysville, California in 1951. After earning bachelor’s degrees in English and Art from U. C. Davis, she moved to Idaho to work as a horse wrangler then as a U.S. Forest Service wilderness ranger with pack mules in the Sawtooth Wilderness. In 1974 she settled in Salt Lake City to teach middle school in Murray then in Hyrum, where she finished her 41-year career teaching freshman English.
She was named Utah English Teacher of the Year (1988), Utah Poet of the Year (1993) by the Utah State Poetry Society, and was a Shipley Associates fellow in the 1981 Utah Writing Project. Margaret has taught writing to inmates at the Cache County Jail, Navajo students in Blanding, children at the Stokes Nature Center (Logan), and countless adult venues.
Her poetry has been published in Christian Science Monitor, High Country News, Owen Wister Review, Pilgrimage, Utah Life Magazine, Utah Magazine, Great and Peculiar Beauty: A Utah Reader (ed. Tom Lyon and Terry Tempest Williams), Witnessing Earth, Deep Wild, Petroglyph, and The Crucible (USU.)
Her fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Western American Literature, Utah: A Guide to the State (Barry Scholl), Utah Wilderness Association Review, Salt Lake Tribune, Beehive History, Idaho Commission for Libraries, Catalyst Magazine, Mountain Times, and Hiker’s Guide to Utah (Hall.) Margaret also wrote monthly illustrated natural history essays for the Herald Journal (Logan) and Standard Examiner (Ogden.)
Her work won second-place prizes in the 1985 Utah Original Writing Competition, for both the Serious Poetry on a Theme category, judged by Richard Eberhart, and the Young Adult Novel category. She also received a second-place prize for her novel Wyoming Gold, judged by Ron Carlson in 2012.
Work
Liturgy for Earth
LITURGY FOR EARTH
In this juniper,
born of a seed on a mesa in the sun,
shelter of jays and mountain lion, is the word.
In this rock,
ancient as the vesper wind caressing
every crevice, every cleft, is the altar.
In this cirque,
comber of clouds and midwife
of the dawn, is the homily.
In this stream,
filling granite fonts with golden offering
of aspen leaves and cutthroat trout, is the hymn.
In this goshawk,
who, with stroke and gesture of wingtip,
slices through wind and cloud, is the way.
In my heart,
where deep love for this world
wraps itself about each tiny thing, is hope.
The Qi of Fir
THE QI OF FIR
A needle of white fire stitched cloud to ground.
We stashed our heavy packs, tarped tight,
and scrambled beneath a canopy of fir.
Clark’s nutcrackers shared the dry boughs.
Sheets of cold rain draped the Middle Fork.
Patient half an hour, starting to shiver,
I taught you Qigong— arms in a slow arc,
legs shifting stance, hands pushing dark
energy away, pulling light in.
Again. Again.
The storm growled down the canyon.
We emerged into a sparkling kingdom
of trees, hefted our packs and climbed
the puddled path to the summit,
glowing in afternoon sun.
Distance
DISTANCE
In this kayak—
the color of riverbank,
bleached cottonwood—
I paddle close,
dripping, blending
into the water world.
Popping onto the surface
from a black and white bubble,
a red-eyed loon inspects
my shape, my gestures, my route.
Intolerant of uncertainty,
he curls beneath the lake.
I am a brooch
on the water god’s chest,
lifting and lowering
on each green swell.
I sit the waves like the spine
of a cantering horse,
hammering toward shore.
I paddle, propel my glide—
at my speed, to my spot,
in my arms’ rhythm.
A naiad with an entourage
of minnows, I beach
my boat in the shallows,
step barefooted onto the sand.
Beneath driftwood, a spring
trickles into the lake.
Birds from dappled leaves
flit down to sip
their reflections.
Adorned in shadows
of cottonwood, I wade
into stories of the lake.
Bibliography
Poetry collections:
Chokecherry Rain, Utah State Poetry Society publication, 1993
In the Temple of the Stars, 2020 (amazon.com)
Novels:
The Marti Bruhn series (outdoor suspense/mystery), 2020-2021, amazon.com:
The Turquoise Bear
Wyoming Gold
The Crimson Trail
The Bronze Rim of Baja
The Wine-Dark Spell
Chapbooks:
The Saddlebag Poems (2018)
Appaloosa Earth (2018)
Driftwood Ring (1975)
