Bio: Hayden is Poet Laureate and Professor of Humanities, receiving the Professor of the Year and League for Innovation Teaching Excellence Awards. Her chapter, Saunter Like Muir, was published in Eco pedagogies: Practical Approaches to Experiential Learning (2022). Additionally, many of her poems have been published in literary journals, in both print and online.She lives on a farm with her family with dogs, cats, goats, pigs, chickens, and a duck named Dorothy.
Memento Mori
As a kid, you put your tongue-tied
faith in crashing waves, hidden
street shadows of broken vows
You put it in harmful, violent
words, wasted truth, red
velvet, trivial tea for two
You put it in adobe prayers,
believers, theory forgivers
flesh and bone pay the price
Now, you put it in your golden
crown of silence, lessons learned
a place to sit still in the snow
Fevers of the Mind 