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Crow Ink
By Sharon Auberle
74 Poems/ 138 Pages/ $15
Little Eagle Press
Baileys Harbor, WI, USA
ISBN: 978-0-9823419-3-3
Review by Karen Schwartz

    One might think at first glance that Sharon Auberle’s Crow Ink is an unruffled look into ornithology and the magnificence behind the birds she observes throughout her collection of poems, but an open mind and an introspective look into human emotion allows the reader to find a deeper understanding behind her words.

Without a doubt, this nature lover finds fascination with these winged beauties and uses their uninhibited presence to complement her spiritual experience of love, anger, and relationship as in The Day We Saw the Eagles. After witnessing a pair of these soaring wonders “…seeming to touch the sun/,” the poet observes, “Once you’ve seen this, you’ve been blessed/ and there’s nothing left but to fall together/back into the fire, melt the ice,/ consume the angry words,/ begin again that spinning freefall,/ locked together in the fierceness of loving.

     As Ms. Auberle reflects on her personal existence, readers can’t help but glance back on their own as she invites her audience on a guided tour of one particular sensational day in her life. In 2/20/2000, Sharon cites, “On this day I’m possibilities, as well as memories./ I am this poem and poetry yet to be written./ I’m wind and light and sun, shadow, eagle and crow./ Today I’m the hours and minutes of my life,/ tumbling through space, like ravens/ riding the updrafts, then freefalling/ down dark, dark canyons.

    Ms. Auberle masterfully weaves imagery, passion and respectability as wildlife and humanity bond. In Walking a Snowy Road, Sharon reflects, “I see myself-sixty-something,/ carrying a wing down a road near dark…/ this is a poem I think./ So is the one-winged carcass/ buried somewhere in the snow./ So too the shaggy beast, licking its bloodied paws.

     Poetry can turn strangers into familiar faces as poet and reader share common experiences through the power of words. Sharon Auberle is good at that and sprinkles healthy doses of spirituality and personal suggestion for leading wholesome and self-actualized lives. In Wild Geese, she advises us to consider these birds to “Take a moment – listen hard,/ heed their soul-song,/ embrace its echo in your heart./ Do not simply watch/ the birds disappear/ bearing, for yet another year,/ your unfulfilled passion on their backs.

    Immersed between two covers featuring a black and white crow, the poetry in Crow Ink is sure to stroke the nature lover in every reader offering a cornucopia of bird references that is sure to delight the bird enthusiast and turn those of us with less experience into bird watchers from our very own home.

 


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