Surviving Eden: Field Notes is by Kawita Kandpal, whose debut collection of poetry, Folding a River, has just been published by Marick Press.
"Call it a ceremony of praise,
cathedrals of poplars lean into prairie grass,
this side of solitude.
Countryside of my longest lonely,
how I praise your gestures of resilience.
White willows inspire on lesser days.
Once my father showed me how to fold our back field of winter wheat
in my palms, like prayer. From his sick bed, he folded my hands in his,
two snowy egrets, netted in a death song.
At winter's end, I return to the place of wheat and willows,
and my father, how I praise what endures,
the soft green emerges and the weeping willow still weeps,
each impossible season."
I love how this poem begins - the opening stanza merging nature and religion in the way that Kandpal does. She then continues this right on through to the end of the piece, also utilizing repetition - that of the resilience of the willow tree rings very well in my reading.
Comments