Barbara Lawlor, Ward.

Mike Parker walks the woods of Ward and sees what surrounds him, in the pine needles on the ground, in the flight of a raven, in the first coil of a Pasque flower and in the warm light that shines from the window of his cabin, a sanctuary for love, for peace.

He feels the mountains include him, cloaking him in their protective mass, without crushing him. He wears the hills like a mantle of serenity. They are his kimono.

Last month, Mike, a well-known Ward poet introduced his new book of poetry, “Kimono Mountain,” at a reading at the Blue Owl Bookstore in Nederland. Mike doesn’t just read his poems, he acts them, he picks up the rhythm of the words which take on their own cadence as he uses them to define the passion of the poetry he showers on his audience.

Carried a bit further, one can also picture the poems becoming the lyric of a rap song, pounding the consonants into cognizance of rhyme. He is sometimes raw, angry, sometimes tender and empathetic, always passionate. In “Kimono Mountain” Mike lets his antipathy for Trump display itself in biting puns, prickly parodies which are amusing but frightening at the same time.

Oxymoron in the White House

“I’m for affordable housing I build hotels

The intelligence agencies are dumb

Reading is a waste of time I toilet twitter

I’m not bitter about the press

A black in the White House was scary

…I’ll fire the jobless

Also, mine is bigger than yours.”

Mike came to Ward from the East Coast, finding his spot in the world in the small mining town that keeps time at bay while the golden, silver beauty of the Rocky Mountains trades places with the seasons. He put his heart and soul in the Ward Community Library and the Artists in Residence program, being the recipient of the honor two times himself.

He lives what he admires, hitchhiking to his job at Nature’s Own each day, no matter the weather. Mike is a mentor to young poets and is always up for organizing a venue for them to open their words to the public.

When Mike reads his work, the words become more than poetry, taking on a melody that is almost toe-tapping. This is due to his stint as the lead singer in the Ballistic Kisses band in the 80s in the Lower East Side of New York City. In a review in The Soho Weekly News, Mike is described as very intense, the band was described as having genuine, serious political thought, “an honest, urgent, sincere political thing going on.”

Mike returned to the mountains where he still lives with his wife Mary Johnson Parker and daughter Frannie. He has published three collections of his poetry: Don’t Fall Off the Mountain, Wallflower Sutra and Walking on Water in a Razorblade Breeze.

Mike is the recipient of the Neodata Literary Fellowship from the Boulder County Arts Alliance.

In his “How to Make Your Own Kimono” poem he writes:

“…a love affair everyday

Just walking out the door

of a roughcut cabin we shared

retreating from cities a softness

without media’s vomit

meandering in soft rains

Kimono’s silky smooth healed us,”

Mike repeats the phrase, “I wanted what I had,” perhaps the perfect description of living life in the now, in the here and wrapped in the silky flow of a kimono, despite the injustices that eat up the rest of the world.

“Kimono Mountain” works its way through months of mountain living, highlighting the bits and pieces of a life lived in Ward.

At Mike’s reading, he introduced Kazen Edwards, who follows in his footsteps, capturing also the grace and heat of feeling and praising the world while becoming the watchdog that keeps an open eye and a ready snarl for that which would bring harm.

Mike’s books of poetry may be purchased at the Blue Owl Bookstore and Nature’s Own in Nederland.

In a short ode to his lineage, Mike writes:

“father was a snow shovel

mother a handful of kindling

I was the last wooden match

in the box.”