a while ago, my lovely online friend and fellow therapist sarah luczaj sent me a copy of her little book of poetry, an urgent request.
such a small and unassuming book.
so much yummy poetry in there.
thaw
if your silence should fall
from balance, from form,
from branches to water
with a sliding sound
from the green leaves
left behind,
I would catch it
with my mouth
and ask you to touch
with your tongue the snow inside.
yes, yummy is the right word – her poems are sensoria. look here: we have sound (“silence”), proprioception (“balance”), touch and vision (“form”) and taste (“mouth”).
and then there is the sense of knowing that wafts through all good poetry. the poem makes such eminent sense – a word-picture of thawing silence – because sarah, full of wisdom, connects her inner feeling of the experience to the reader’s inner feeling. yes, yes, feelings are always “inner” but the feeling that comes with the cold hurt of silence, does it not often seem to be deeper inside – not just “in” but deeper “in”: “inner” – than milder experiences, say, the slight annoyance of a missed bus?
sarah reaches deep inside, and through that act of stoutheartedness and exploration, she reaches across, into the heart of the reader.
an urgent request is published by fortunate daughter, an imprint of tebot bach.
PS. come to think of it, sarah’s reaching into and across relates nicely to two of last week’s posts, this one, and reminds me particularly of philosopher claudia card, here. sarah herself has a thing or two to say about voice, in her guest post the lyric self, for example.