Whale Fall & Black Sage: Poems of the Journey

Today the first edition of Whale Fall & Black Sage went to the printer.

A special, numbered and signed edition of 50 was printed for the Whale Fall poetry and dance performance on December 15th, but some blurbs were missing and there were other small edits. So today is the day that it finally feels finished, complete.

It feels good.

I’m happier with this book than I have been with any other, except maybe the very first, Here Along Cazenovia Creek. And Cazenovia Creek wrote itself, pouring out from my delight at living in that old farm house along the creek.

Like Cazenovia Creek, this book speaks of the natural world – but with a difference. In Whale Fall & Black Sage, the natural world is fully conscious and intentional. There is no separation between mind and matter, between the transcendent and the immanent.

For these are “poems of the journey” and the journey is begun at the command of “three strange angels” who say: “Go down. Now you must love that too.” The work of the journey is to become fully  in love with the world.

The book ends with a crow – perhaps the same crow who has accompanied us on the journey – offering the gift of joy in things as they are:

“And we nod to right and left
over our gleaming shoulders—
two fine crows parading—

taken with ourselves
and giving pleasure

singing the song of being alive and fine to see.”