Lucky ones

This new Colorado Sun article reminded me how fortunate I was to be treated at UCHealth when I was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) last year.

The clinical trial that triathlete Siri Lindley went through in 2019 saved her life. What came out of that trial saved mine, too, and I imagine the lives of many others. I wrote about my own experience in a series of posts on this site (all tagged AML) and later put those posts in a book.

Yes to making it possible for more people to have access to such medical treatment.

That’s all for now.

B.J.

Lost poem

The following poem is one I wrote in February 2019 when Mrs. Smith and I still lived on the Front Range.

I stumbled across it this week as I was looking for something else here at my desk on the Western Slope, where we now have a view of puffy, white clouds (new photo) hanging out above the snowy Grand Mesa.

Colorado clouds

Flat gray clouds stretch
in graceful curves, high and wide, 
slowed and bent in their journey east
by jutting, rocky peaks
and bare, windswept summits.

Towering thunderheads catch them
from behind by dusk,
taking them in and reaching higher
before crashing and booming
their way free to cross the plains.

They are closer to the ground
here than long ago.
Or is the ground closer to them,
as it is to the fierce sun
and the still-distant stars?

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For more rhyme and verse, see Rhyme and verse and/or my first poetry collection.

Scenes from Bandelier

Mrs. Smith and I explored a little bit of New Mexico last week. Just sharing a few of the many shapes and scenes in Bandelier National Monument that caught my eye….