A gorgeous collection that brims with sagacity and compassion; haunting and beautiful...
Spoken in meditative prose poetry, award-winning Bruce’s latest work is an ode to life’s acuity. She captures the poignancy of grief and provokes reflection on those defining moments that render us forever changed: “The morning you left the kitchen light was on. Some phantom sound led me to believe you were still here—making coffee in the small kitchen, bothering with the news./ I called out your name. Your side of the bed was cold.” Contemplating the inexorable march of time and the transformations in which it results, Bruce elegiacally evokes desires lost to the ages, fleetingness of life, and a somber understanding of mortality: “Name all the ways a body changes. Ash-colored hair begins to appear at the nape and temple. We mark it, poison it; it slowly learns not to listen. There is a certain economy with time. Yet, still, we are astral bodies—it stays in our very marrow.” “ONCE EACH YEAR” testify to the nature of grief and trauma and its emotional toll: “Once each year, my mother cuts back the vines of the hops from the railing, replants seedlings, begins again. When my sister disappeared, my mother pruned the lavender in the same way, likely thinking of my sister’s trimming stalks to dry in the vase by the Window.” Bruce also sings of summer’s golden daffodils, red salvia, paperwhite Narcissus and the fierce efflorescence of plum trees, evoking the fleeting beauty of life. The book is filled with dramatic and poignant moments, as it highlights the challenges of getting older, bearing the weight of memories, and reveling in the beauty of life. Readers are invited to consider the splendour and intricacy of life, and urged to find purpose in both extraordinary and mundane experiences. Passionate and illuminating.
Finishing Line Press
Pub date October 18, 2024
Price $15.99 Paperback
