The Truth on the Tongue
by Geoffrey Heptonstall
51 Poems ~ 64 pages
Price: $15.00
Publisher: Cyberwit.net
http://www.cyberwit.net
ISBN #: 978-93-6354-578-6
To Order: by E-mail: info@cyberwit.net
Also available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Waterstones
Reviewed by Michael Escoubas
Two important words comprise the essence of Geoffrey Heptonstall’s latest project: “Truth” and “Tongue.” Heptonstall’s unrelenting pursuit of these two words make The Truth on the Tongue a collection that will stand the test of time. In his endnotes the poet writes,
“The acts of writing and reading are forms of reliving. We draw upon our experiences when we write. We bring something of our experience into our reception of a creative work. We filter the words through our archive of personal memory.”
No less a luminary than Mahatma Ghandi said, Devotion to Truth is the sole justification for our existence. The Biblical writer Saint James employs a seafaring metaphor describing the tongue as; An exceedingly small rudder steers a very large ship. While both terms are academic concepts, it is up to poets to flesh them out by that which only poets can do. My goal in this review is to illustrate Geoffrey Heptonstall’s unique ability to do just that.
It is to be noted that Heptonstall’s work is not about an organized literary treatise. He is a poet. As such he does not tell his readers what to do or think; rather, he offers readers life-stimuli to consider. The title poem sets a helpful tone even though it appears relatively late in the collection:
The Truth on the Tongue
The truth is not yet in sight,
nothing to be seen by human eyes.
In a room where there is no-one
every sound resonates,
the pulse of time perhaps,
or the scurrying of fear.
Not every truth is well told.
The stain may be mistaken
for blood’s embittered rage
in a shattering and a scattering.
The glass in your hand contains the wine
that holds the truth on every tongue.
Words loosened from care
come rolling down the hill
until they touch reality
that is an empty glass.
The key word in this poem is reality. What is truth if it is not grounded in the practical reality of life? Here, I see hints of the whole: truth is obscure (line 1–not yet in sight), truth is not easy to understand (line 7–Not every truth is well told), truth is closer than we think (lines 11 & 12–The glass in your hand contains the wine/ that holds the truth on every tongue).
I read “Origins” and “Waking the Dream” (pages 7 and 8 respectively) together. The last three lines of “Origins” suggest a dream like experience: “Eyes upon the lineaments of desire, / a landless sea of the setting sun, / the perception of her approaching.” These lines segue nicely into:
On waking the dream may live
with open eyes to the world
that imagines itself
to be the one reality.
Another is preserved by the power
to impress on the mind.
Our thoughts on this
are free to defy gravity
as they drift homeward to the stars.
Observations of motion concur
with the ancestral acceptance
that the earth is fragile.
Heptonstall, with gentle nudges, insists that I consider my place in the world, my place in the reality of a fragile earth. Further, I’m called upon to consider what it means to be here. Within the work of this talented poet, I find myself swimming at the deep end of the pool. There’s a lot going on.
In the elegant poem “An Open Mind” the poet experiences the world as I would like to experience it … capturing the world in innocence, as if for the first time:
To hear the morning song
rise with an opening mind
to see the tears of innocence
take root where they will fall.
Nothing so cold it has no life
to feel the growth of the heart
beating in measured steps
across a glistening surface.
What is not ice is water.
Such truth surrounds our world.
In a powerful concluding strophe, Heptonstall lifts the curtain on growing wiser as one sees the natural world as a relationship partner:
Consider then how the leaves are
found in a scattered pattern
as random as the traces of rain.
Reading the leaves reveals the tree
that guards the forest dark
in its deepest secrecy.
So many fingers plough the soil
moving through each stage of wisdom.
In the wellspring of our native tongue
speaks another mind of knowing.
“The Door Where We Came In” returns us to Geoffrey Heptonstall’s twin concerns: Truth as expressed through the Tongue of poetry. These lines embody, for this reviewer, Ghandi’s passion for truth and Saint James’ admonition that though the tongue is small it steers the indomitable ship of life.
These things of nature are known,
only to be lost in transition,
the crisis in our command
of where we make habitation.
We grow season by season,
our lives lasting for ever
until the never of leaving
by the door where we came in.
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