Sagebrush Songs arises from the northern New Mexico landscape, remote and unique. The headwaters of the Rio Grande and one of its major tributaries, the Rio Chama, originate in the southern Rocky Mountains. A high desert plateau stretches between the Tusas and Sangre de Christo ranges in this mountain system. The Rio Grande rift, a major continental rift zone, runs through the plateau. As a transitional zone between alpine forests and shortgrass prairie, the sagebrush mesa supports diverse animal and plant communities. A scenic roadway around Wheeler Peak, the highest point in New Mexico, defines the Enchanted Circle a few miles north of the Taos Pueblo. Pueblo Peak, popularly known as Taos Mountain, is revered because the Taos Pueblo's water supply originates there, and because of the mountain's striking contour in the Sangre de Christo range.
The ancient Chinese understanding of Tao sees mountains and rivers as expressions of yin and yang, the energies that animate fundamental creative material. Tao, or "the Way," contemplates mountains and rivers in terms of processes that continually generate and regenerate all things as they emerge from and recede into empty absence. Classical Chinese poetry meditates on such landscape features and their empty spaces. Learning to be present in northern New Mexico enables me to understand why this is so. Sagebrush Songs is my meditation on its mountains and rivers as manifestations of the Way of all things.
Lee, Margaret: - Margaret Lee is a poet, fiber artist, watercolor sketcher, aspiring naturalist, and scholar of the ancient world. Her debut poetry collection, Someone Else's Earth (Finishing Line Press, 2021), contains poems inspired by fragments of the ancient Greek poet, Sappho. Margaret is retired as Assistant Professor of Humanities at Tulsa Community College in Tulsa, Oklahoma. She attended Edgecliff College in Cincinnati, Ohio and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in History from Seattle University in Seattle, Washington. She received a Master of Divinity from Phillips Theological Seminary in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and a Doctor of Theology from the Melbourne College of Divinity in Melbourne, Australia. She edited Sound Matters: New Testament Studies in Sound Mapping (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2018) and co-authored Sound Mapping the New Testament (Salem, OR: Polebridge Press, 2009) with Bernard Brandon Scott. Margaret has written numerous articles on the Greek language and New Testament studies in edited books and peer-reviewed academic journals. Margaret worked in the finance industry in Seattle for six years, then twenty-five years in higher education in Tulsa as a faculty member and administrator. She raised her daughter and son in Oklahoma and now has three grandchildren. Margaret avidly pursues the fiber arts, including spinning, weaving, and knitting. She enjoys sketching with pencil, ink, and watercolor. Margaret is an enthusiastic birdwatcher. She loves exploring the Oklahoma prairies, New Mexico deserts, and Oregon coastal forests and seashores. Margaret is a member of the Society of Biblical Literature, a fellow of the Westar Institute, a former officer of the Tulsa Handspinner's Guild, and past president of the Tulsa Handweavers Guild. Margaret is a member of the Tulsa NightWriters, the Oklahoma Writers Federation, Inc., the Academy of American Poets, and the Society of the Muse of the Southwest (SOMOS).
