Meet Wyoming Poet Maria Lisa Eastman

by Darcy Minter

Every year, we look forward to welcoming new poets to the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering, and this year is no exception. One of those poets is Maria Lisa Eastman, who ranches with her husband Skip in Hyattville, Wyoming, on the west side of the Big Horn Mountains. Maria and Skip have a wonderful tradition in their home. When they have dinner guests, they scatter poetry books around the table and ask people to browse through them and read a poem if they are inspired. Skip encouraged Maria to read her own poetry to their guests. And, she says, he has been “bugging” her to apply to perform at the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering for a long time. She says she finally did it to shut him up. And she couldn’t believe it when she was accepted!

Maria says she started writing poetry as a young girl needing to express her pre-adolescent angst. And she has been writing poetry for more than 40 years. Her poems are often about horses which are her passion. She started taking riding lessons when she was five years old and has ridden ever since. Whether riding in the rainy countryside outside of London, England, scrimmaging polo ponies in Santa Fe, or working cows and riding fences on ranches in New Mexico and Wyoming, she’s always made sure horses were near. While riding colts out and collecting native grasses in New Mexico, she earned a master’s degree in range and watershed management. Currently, she operates Rainhorse, a nonprofit organization offering equine-assisted activities and therapies, and she trains in dressage on her 18-hand gelding Brego, a horse she rescued six years ago. Many of the horses that Maria works with in her equine program are rescued.

Maria is new to Elko and new to performing her poetry. Fresh off her recent readings at a local book store and book club, Elko will be her third time in front of an audience. Her poetry has always been personal, written for herself. Now she is ready and looking forward to sharing it with us!

You can see Maria perform several times throughout the Gathering. Check out our full schedule of events here.

Awakening
By Maria Lisa Eastman

When I wake in the morning
I can’t wait to see my dear friends –
The animals who live around me.

The dogs wag and grin, they
Groan in delight as they greet the early day.
Horses stretch and nicker across a sleeping pasture
They prick their ears as one
When oats splash against a wooden pail.
Barn cats unfurl their downy limbs and blink –surely they are smiling-
In the slow building heat of the sun.
Baby calves, black against the quicksilver grass
Buck and hump, butting their quiet mothers
Who graze together with studious pleasure.

Do we need a reason to be glad of the day?
Look at all those around us- for them it is enough
That the sky brightened
And enough that the sun warms
For these wise ones, enough to live one more simple day.