Luci Shaw, from Bellingham, Washington, is the author of numerous collections of poetry, including Harvesting Fog (Pinyon) and The Slow Pleasures (forthcoming from WordFarm).
The pale bits—twigs, fibers, pine needles—sun-struck, fall through the lazy air as if yearning to be embodied in my knitting, like gold flecks woven into a ceremonial robe.
Then surprise—a new marvel! Like a parachutist, a very small beetle lands on the greeny stitch I have just passed from left needle to right; the creature’s burnished carapace mirrors precisely the loop of glowing, silky yarn that he has chosen.
When this shawl ends up warming someone’s shoulders, will she sense the unexpected— this glance, this gleam, this life spark?
The bell-ringers rise and fall with the weight of their bells, holding on for dear life to the pulls, the ropes rough in their hands, the young ones lifted up, up from the belfry floor like adolescent angels treading air, as if so caught up in those peals of sound—each of them in turn answering the plea of ponderous metal— they feel like feathers in a wind.
Consecrated, cassocked, gathered for this task of intricate rhythm-ing, they learn to weave their way through the ring-patterns like pigeons to the dovecote over the cadences of distance. Even a mile away we ourselves sway like bells, snared
We see God in the shape he shows to us. For some, fire. For others, holy smoke, oil, a running river, sheep’s crook, muscular right arm that holds against the dark, the dread.
It is the oddity of poets to not see the world straight on but at some slant, under the skin, behind the scrim—a scurry of leaves, clouds. God speaks his presence in the wind.
I sensed him even in the ink warming within the pen before these words arrived.
A striking and apt image enhances the cover of this new collection of interviews with 19 leading American poets. An antique chair sits half in shadow; its cane seat, crossed by a beam of light, filters bright intricacies onto the legs, the dowels, the timbered floor. The message here is illumination, from a source offstage.
