BETTE WOLF DUNCAN, 1930-2016
In her bio at CowboyPoetry.com, she wrote:
I was born during the depression, on my grandfather’s ranch in Stillwater County, Montana. Later my folks moved to Billings, where I went to grade and high school. This is rodeo country; and a good portion of summer entertainment involved rodeo attendance. It is also cattle country; and it was difficult not to grow up a cowpoke of sorts by osmosis.
I worked during high school as an usherette in a movie theater. I worked my way through college as a long-distance operator, and I graduated from Rocky Mountain College in Billings Montana in 1954. For the next 18 years, I worked as a Medical Technologist, chiefly in the field of toxicology. Among other institutions, I worked at Texas Children’s Hospital and Southwestern Medical School in Dallas, Los Angeles County Hospital in Los Angeles and Valley Presbyterian Hospital in Van Nuys, California.
In 1974, I graduated from Drake University Law School. Subsequently, I was employed as a Prosecutor in The Polk County Attorney’s Office, Des Moines, Iowa; and as Director of the Regulatory Division and legal counsel, Iowa Department of Agriculture. For the last eight years, prior to my retirement in 1995, I was an Administrative Law Judge (tax cases). Since retirement, I have been so busy I wonder how in the world I ever managed before retirement.
Bette was the author of several books and in 2011 she was named “Top Female Poet” by the Academy of Western Artists.
Sibilant and sonorous,
the gentle chinook breeze
hummed along and whistled
as it rustled through the trees…..
southeastward down the Rockies-
a tellin’ tales of spring;
southeastward, down the Rockies-
a smellin’ so like spring.
The pity is, the chinook breeze
swept down the slopes too late;
too late to warm and save from harm
a world that couldn’t wait.
The range turns cruel and vicious
when entombed beneath the snow;
when a savage blizzard’s ragin’
and it’s forty-plus below;
and the stock can’t find a shelter
’cuz there’s just no place t’ go;-
and the killer winds are slashin’
and it’s forty –plus below.
5000 waited for it…
the Chinook that didn’t come….
and all 5000 perished-
5000 minus one.
The blizzard flung its mortar out
and sepulchered in white
a weary world succumbing to
the blizzard’s savage bite.
It clamped its teeth into the herds
of white-man’s buffalo,
strugglin’ hard to hoof up grass
through ice-encrusted snow.
No food… no shelter…blizzard gales
a’ whippin’ cross the land….
the torment was beyond the scope
that man or beast could stand.
5000 waited for it-
a chinook- a ray of sun;
and all 5000 perished….
5000 minus one.
It’s temper bared, the blizzard sank
its fangs into their hides;
with not an ounce of pity shown
for suffering stock that died.
The warm Chinook too late exhaled
its thawing, spring-like breath….
too late for herds, all ice-interred,
that kept a date with death.
Bette Wolf Duncan
copyright©2001
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