sara Etgen-Baker Poet Personification

Notes About The Poem

image of Washoe warrior overlooking the Rose Wilderness

*The Mt. Rose Wilderness is a protected wilderness area in the Carson Range of Washoe County, in the northwestern U.S. state of Nevada. It is located between Lake Tahoe and Reno, Nevada, covering approximately 31,223 acres. Mount Rose Wilderness has been home to the Washoe Indian Tribe for over 400 generations. (Source: Wikipedia.org)

Poem submitted to “Wilderness of Want” poetry contest, Ink Empress, sponsor, September 19, 2026.  

Wilderose

I am T'áno Shemu  
of the Washoe Indians.  

I am the mountain’s breath  
over the rose wildness
carried through four hundred generations,  
guiding you into the rose-lit silence  
where our old winds  
still remember your name.

I wake within Rose Wilderness,  
where rose-quartz ramparts  
rise in radiant rapture,  
and the Carson crestline  
u
  n
    v
      e
       i
         l
           s 
its silk-spun symphony  
of Washoe winds.

Here, pine-perfumed pathways  
pulse with four hundred generations  
of earth-etched echoes,  
their ancestral ardor drifting  
through the dusk-kissed drapery  
of dawn.
Granite glimmers  
in blush-born brilliance,  
a mythic mosaic  
of mountain memory  
holding embered epics  
of every spirit  
who once walked  
these wild inclines  
with sky-seeking steps  
and soul-sure stride.

I feel their presence  
like warm wind  
on winter’s wrist,  
a tender tremor rising  
from the land’s luminous longing,  
guiding me through this rose-lit realm  
where want becomes  
wild-hearted worship  
of place, 
             people, 
                       and past.

So the dawn drapes  
the Carson crestline  
in blush-born brilliance,  
and the Washoe winds  
u
  n
    f
     u
       r
         l 
their embered echoes  
across the granite glow.

In that wild stillness,  
I feel the land remembering me  
as gently  
as I remember it--

and in the rose-lit rapture  
of Wilderose,  
I rise wrapped  
in ancestral radiance,  
carried by the mountain’s molten memory  
into the shimmering forever  
of its sacred breath.

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