THE SAPLINGS THINK OF US AS YOUNG

This collection of poems evokes images of dawn and dusk, the seasons, the sea, quietude, and intimate togetherness.

This set is unified by four distinct suites of poems called “Seedlings”: one suite in each of four untitled parts. Some poems contain references to pines and redwoods in the forest and houseplants in the home; others inhabit the beach or the barren highways of California. Love is the focus of many of the works, as in the opening couplets of one of the Seedlings: “I rearrange my inner ear / to link with your pulse, / the other side of your heart— / a rose in the uncracked dawn.” Averting death and disaster is another recurring theme, as at the end of “Forecast,” and a theme of willing survival is most fervent at the end of “When You Understand, the Sea Deepens”: “I hold on to your body. / I must enter these spaces, these breaks / in your skin.          No blood will seep out / of your wounds if my soul surges in.” Until halfway through the collection, the speaker liberally employs the word we, which feels specific—the way couples refer to themselves. Following the Seedlings poems in Part II, the opening lines of “I Knew the Flavor of Apple, but Not Its Sweetness” cut particularly deeply: “A year east of today, the word ash was singular. I had / not yet decided to spend lockdown cleaning out the garage.” The very next poem, “I Sleep at the Far Edge of the Bed, Crowded by Nothing,” begins in abject solitude, and eventually, any reference to we effectively becomes ambiguous. Formally, the poems are written in free verse, couplets, and quatrains; enjambment consistently renders most of the poetry meditative or exploratory, but where end-stops break the flow, the voice becomes resounding.

A wide-ranging and often affecting set of works.