In this debut poetry collection by an award-winning fiction writer, the longing for God and the poignancy of family life echo each other’s music. The traditional forms of sonnet, sestina, and villanelle punctuate more modern verse forms, this combination being only one of the strands binding past and present. Many of these poems may be read as confessions—of joy, of hurtfulness given or received, of awe at the inescapable reality of love. This volume comprises spiritual writing that remains firmly of this world, part apostasy, part song, reaching out for meaning from both the shifting landscape of Maryland’s Chesapeake Bay and the interior places of the heart.
ContentsCritical CareSonnet: My Mother Refuses MastectomySnowfall Expected After MidnightMemory Is in Our FingersThe Phantom HitcherSonnet: Golden Retriever Abandoned in FieldThe VinedresserStorm Season, Rehoboth BeachWood, Shell, StarLove Poem (Tonight We Swell)Night Fishing on Chesapeake BaySonnet (One Comes, Then, Faintly Conscious)Snakes in CeilingAdonai, AdonaiWitch CanticleJack o’Lanterns in a RowSonnet: The Word MercurialOn Being Asked, While Mailing Poems, Whether These Packages Contain Anything Potentially HazardousThe Love Gods AskSonnet: Capitol Hill, 1981Critical CareOur Purpose In SpeakingSonnet: Francis to the BirdsFifty-four AcresThe SwimmerAt Summer’s End We Came to the Darkening SeaI Want the Light No One SeesMetaphor of the CaveChristmas Eve, North of Dolan, IndianaSonnet: The Dream Undoes Its ExpositionOur Purpose in SpeakingWhale, Cape Henlopen“Great nature has another thing to do to you and me”Sonnet: LustSonnet: After the CrematoriumCatechumenIn Memoriam Erwin Schroedinger, August 1887 – January 1961HandmaidenEpitaph for Unwritten PoetryJalousie MaladiveTidewaterNew Year’s Day (Here is your morning sky)The Woman Upstairs Making LoveSonnet: CrucifixAcknowledgments
