A Fragile Light
by Lois Parker Edstrom
62 Poems ~ 85 pages
Price: $19.99
Publisher: MoonPath Press
ISBN #: 979-8-9899488-1-9
To Order: Amazon.com
Reviewed by Michael Escoubas
Sometimes in the winds of change we find our true direction, is the opening epigram in Lois Parker Edstrom’s fascinating new collection. I paused there. This gentle reminder that locating ourselves amid change is our constant companion. Reading A Fragile Light, is like hearing the voice of my best friend saying, “Have you considered this way of looking at things?”
A Fragile Light is organized into six untitled sections ranging from nine to sixteen poems in each. The sectional divisions are preceded by life-sustaining quotations. Within this framework, poems respond to that quotation’s thrust. They do this without being forced or contrived. The collection flows like the surf washing up on Whidbey Island. Edstrom’s lead poem, “A Quiet Tune” is inspired by Whidbey Island, the poet’s home:
Along the roadways, beach peas riot and ocean spray
rises in frothy clouds. Wild roses border fields
suffused with the contentment of grazing cows
and morning light polishes the leaves of willows,
dances across the prairie to where the bluff drops
down to the sea.
An incoming tide sighs against the shore,
a haunting rhythm that fills me with dreaming,
and I can’t quite decide how to answer
the mysterious call. What are we to do
with such abundance? It can’t be a matter
of merit, but perhaps of learning to receive.
Now fog drifts into the inlet softening sounds
and expectations, and stillness hums its quiet tune.
Did you notice that this gem of an opener is an unconventional sonnet? Edstrom is not telling or teaching me about life. She is doing something better; she is offering an experience of life. I am there. The beach peas don’t merely exist, they “riot” along the roadway. The “ocean spray” caresses my face as it rises in frothy clouds. Then tranquility descends through “cows grazing” in early morning light. A sonnet-like turn happens at the fourth tercet when the poet asks, “What are we to do / with such abundance?” Then amid the inlet’s “softening sounds” the last line brings closure as “stillness hums its quiet tune.”
Silence and calm play big for this poet. In “Trimming the Sails” she notes,
We cut the motor. A moment of silence, broken
only by the lapping waves against the hull
and in this moment, silence rearranges priorities.
Indeed, A Fragile Light is a treasure trove of meditative moments. In a world under the spell of superficial thinking, what I call “cosmetic” values, Edstrom, with gentle humility, lifts the veil that we might look below the surface and catch a glimpse of another way of looking at things. Her poem “Below the Surface” has the author observing a duck which disappears below the surface. The duck alternately rises only to plunge down again and yet again. She compares this to
thoughts that surface and then are gone.
Our lives winnowed down to these moments
of attention, draw us to something beyond
our knowing, something generous, boundless–
Section II opens with an epigram by Henry Havelock Ellis: The art of living lies in a fine mingling of letting go and holding on. Ellis, a British physician, writer and social reformer offers an important life maxim to consider. Indeed, I am led to ask: What if I missed the point of my life altogether? Edstrom, with typical generosity of spirit, explores this “fine mingling of life” through poems such as “Reverie” in which the steady click, click of wheels over rails, brings forth thoughts of things:
I can’t quite hold onto …
It feels like a need to be more than witness
to beauty, to become a part of that which
is beyond; a place to shelter when darkness
sings a sad song.
A Fragile Light is a collection I intend to place on my table beside. I plan to read a selection or two before turning out the light … the fragile light of a meaningful life.
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