Second Bloom

      Poems

      Copyright © 2017 Anya Krugovoy Silver. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

      Cascade Books

      An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers

      199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3

      Eugene, OR 97401

      www.wipfandstock.com

      paperback isbn: 978-1-5326-3007-1

      hardcover isbn: 978-1-5326-3009-5

      ebook isbn: 978-1-5326-3008-8

      Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

      Names: Silver, Anya Krugovoy

      Title: Second bloom / Anya Krugovoy Silver.

      Description: Eugene, OR: Cascade Books 2017 | Series: The Poiema Poetry Series.

      Identifiers: isbn 978-1-5326-3007-1 (paperback) | isbn 978-1-5326-3009-5 (hardcover) | isbn 978-1-5326-3008-8 (ebook)

      Subjects: LCSH:

      Classification: XV0000 X00 2017 (paperback) | XV0000 (ebook)

      Manufactured in the U.S.A. 10/04/17

      The Poiema Poetry Series

      Poems are windows into worlds; windows into beauty, goodness, and truth; windows into understandings that won’t twist themselves into tidy dogmatic statements; windows into experiences. We can do more than merely peer into such windows; with a little effort we can fling open the casements, and leap over the sills into the heart of these worlds. We are also led into familiar places of hurt, confusion, and disappointment, but we arrive in the poet’s company. Poetry is a partnership between poet and reader, seeking together to gain something of value—to get at something important.

      Ephesians 2:10 says, “We are God’s workmanship . . .” poiema in Greek—the thing that has been made, the masterpiece, the poem. The Poiema Poetry Series presents the work of gifted poets who take Christian faith seriously, and demonstrate in whose image we have been made through their creativity and craftsmanship.

      These poets are recent participants in the ancient tradition of David, Asaph, Isaiah, and John the Revelator. The thread can be followed through the centuries—through the diverse poetic visions of Dante, Bernard of Clairvaux, Donne, Herbert, Milton, Hopkins, Eliot, R. S. Thomas, and Denise Levertov—down to the poet whose work is in your hand. With the selection of this volume you are entering this enduring tradition, and as a reader contributing to it.

      —D.S. Martin

      Series Editor

      For Andrew and Noah,

      my beloveds

      “Sorrow is better than laughter, for by sadness of countenance the heart is made glad.”

      —Ecclesiastes 7: 3

      “Let my poem be as transparent as a windowpane Against which a straying bee hits its head.”

      —Anna Kamieńska

      Cape May at Dusk

      At the cape, I stood alone on a platform

      watching swans gather, mallards and herons,

      and below me, a single rabbit, feeding itself

      in the twilight on soft, newly mown grass.

      I don’t know why I’m still alive.

      I don’t know how a line of poetry

      sometimes loses itself and finds me.

      I don’t understand why my body is drawn

      to the marshes, or to the surf dragging

      itself away from the shore.

      Why does memory cling to the briny air,

      settling in my hair like the sandy wind?

      I’ve wasted so many days in half-life—

      shopping, pop music, magazines.

      I should have been thinking of holiness

      and trying to find it—even on these humid

      afternoons when there’s space for image

      but the air is too dense to grasp the form.

      I stand and watch the rabbit, a lean

      wild one, as it attends to its hunger,

      till a little girl comes stomping over,

      shrieking, and it disappears in the wild roses.

      Exile

      Lately, I’ve wanted to be alone.

      To leave home with nothing

      but a few books and my favorite shoes.

      I’d like to live in the mountains,

      but pleasantly, with a broad bed

      and cheese and bread for my board.

      No computers, no commute.

      Just to sit with a pen (like now)

      writing honest lines of poetry

      that no one is likely to read.

      Simple, harmless, with words and firs

      for company, some music—

      at night, the wind at the shutters,

      in times of sorrow, the Psalms.

      A Boy Stands Up During Supper

      A church in the East is abandoned.

      First, rain and snow breach the roof,

      the ceiling leaks and slumps, then buckles

      in great plaster sheets, shattered and dusty.

      Now all manner of rust and rot can enter,

      weeds and moss growing between the pews.

      Worms in the wood, an aisle of mulch,

      an altar of dandelions, nests, and seed.

      The church fails board by board,

      jagged window by jagged window

      through which bees travel unimpeded.

      It whistles and groans, this dying church.

      When a boy tries to find it, it’s gone.

      His mother collapsed from the inside out,

      her heart and lungs accumulating liquid

      until there was too much to sieve,

      and she told her grieving son, “Go East,”

      not knowing the church he sought was a dream,

      a cracked dish, a syringe of morphine.

      Return

      When he returned home after many years,

      an enormous oak had split his house in two,

      its trunk growing right through the center hall.

      Though