Ash & Embers

      Poems

      The Poiema Poetry Series

      Copyright © 2018 James A. Zoller. 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: 978-1-5326-3610-3

      hardcover isbn: 978-1-5326-3612-7

      ebook isbn: 978-1-5326-3611-0

      Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

      Names: Zoller, James A., author.

      Title: Ash & embers : poems / James A. Zoller.

      Description: Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2018. | The Poiema Poetry Series.

      Identifiers: isbn 978-1-5326-3610-3 (paperback). | isbn 978-1-5326-3612-7 (hardcover). | isbn 978-1-5326-3611-0 (epub).

      Subjects: LCSH: American poetry—21st century.

      Classification: PS3576.O44 A94 2018 (print). | PS3576.O44 (epub)

      Manufactured in the U.S.A. 04/03/18

      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 the women in my life

       my mother, in memoriam

       my daughter and

       my daughters-in-law, strong accomplished women all

       my granddaughters with confidence and prayers

       and for Donna, my past my present my future

       vital as the next breath

      In Medias Res

      If you ever climb the map again

      you could stop there and whisper a few hymns

      William Stafford, “Living on the Plains” [1993]

      I was ashamed to ask the king for a band of soldiers and horsemen to protect us against the enemy on our way, since we had told the king, “The hand of our God is for good on all who seek him . . . .”So we fasted and implored our God for this, and he listened to our entreaty.

      Ezra 8:22-23 [ESVUK]

      In Medias Res

      The poet regards the mirror formed by words

      of his own making, and what he sees is fracture, reflections

      that appear variously as trees and water;

      as topography lined and chaotic with isobars;

      as moments that vanish when they appear;

      as the faces of his children or of others

      who become his children; as the angelic

      face of his beloved, honored in medias res;

      as – in its own obsessive gravity – the face

      behind the face he shows the world; as

      – in flashes – as if he had somehow caught the sun –

      burning glimpses of God that blind him

      that bring him fumbling back to study its

      depths. And to sing. Again. And again.

      Photographs

      and I was young and I heard sheepbells far off

      a breeze in the almonds a voice

      with its echo and a girl singing somewhere

      and I thought it might be enough

      W.S.Merwin, “Can Palat”

      I divested myself of despair

      and fear when I came here.

      Jane Kenyon, “Notes from the Other Side”

      The wind you walk against but do not feel is ignorance.

      William Stafford, “12 September 1981,” Every War Has Two Losers

      Antebellum Family Photograph (1939)

      One need not move to be in motion.

      A breeze tugs at hems – skirt and pant leg drift.

      A lock of disciplined hair is teased loose,

      a gust makes the body lean against it

      just as one leans against the future.

      One need not move to be in motion.

      The sun, too, misbehaves, crimping the eyes,

      flashing on glass. Throwing its hard shadows.

      So one comes to the black and white of 1939

      not nearly as surprised as they were, captured

      in their happy pose, disarmed by wind and sun,

      – the world spinning madly but in some larger frame –

      disarming in their attitudes. One need not move

      to be in motion. In that photograph

      lines and life remain vivid, while time

      bumps us along, out of control.

      His War

      My father returned from that war

      in a cloud of radiant dust.

      In the days of the Empire’s setting sun

      his troop ship steams to port