Poems of the Spirit – Sometimes a Glimpse
by Alan Harris
128 Poems ~ 137 pages
Price: $9.99
Publisher: Independently Published
ISBN: 9798270567682
To Order: Amazon.com
Reviewed by Michael Escoubas
Alan Harris’s cover image grabbed my attention as I reflected on my review of Poems of the Spirit – Sometimes a Glimpse. The mountain, shrouded in clouds, gray sky hovering omi-nously above, express with uncanny perfection, a glimpse of the rich poetry within its covers.
Harris, in his Preface, alludes to his expansive view of the term “Spirit”:
Life is a school for souls, and as we evolve in the Spirit, each harvesting of events is like accomplishing a new grade in school.
Poems of the Spirit is a banquet of Spirit-themed poems which pay tribute to a mature poet writing within the prime of his creative life.
Harris leads with a double quatrain that mirrors my personal inner experience:
After a Darkness of Soul
How after a darkness of soul
does flower a sunrise of hope.
How never does awfulness stay
where planets are children of stars.
How warmly a candle lights up
in blackmost recesses of night.
How grieving and torment give way
to palpable peace in the heart.
In “Beauty,” Harris alludes to but does not clarify a source for the sunset he enjoys:
Soon after sundown tonight
leftover orange fades upward
into night’s deepening blue
above our row of cypress trees.
How does a sky do this?
It looks so easy.
Such beauty is free to see
yet invites a seeing into.
Who is living behind this beauty?
No name is being spoken to me
but there’s an inner rush as if
some Friend from space is near.
A Word about Style and Variety
Having consumed the hors d’oeuvres, what awaits the intrepid connoisseur of Spirit-filled poetry? Ballads, sonnets, haiku, rhyming quatrains, rhyming couplets, tercets, exquisite free verse, short lines, long lines, interesting indentations. Several poems consist of like numbers of words per line. “Mother’s Secret” is a balladic conversation between a mother and son. Don’t miss this one, (page 75), it is full of enduring pathos between two people whose love sustains them in life and in death. “Echoes of the Decalogue,” is a sequence of ten commentary poems on the Ten Commandments. These pithy poems add meaningful flesh to the bones. Here is a sample based on “Thou shalt not kill”:
There are a thousand
reasons to kill,
and only one not to.
What is that reason?
Read it in a cow’s gentle eyes.
Hear it in the rooster’s crowing at dawn.
Feel it in the handshake
of a so-called enemy soldier.
Your killing knife
pierces the center
of your own heart.
Harris’s poems are intellectually challenging. “Relief in Relife” is a speculative work which ponders the mystery of the afterlife: “Does evening raise a fear of no more dawns? / Does autumn’s chill forever kill our lawns? / If not, then why dread gray hair in a mirror? / If dawns and lawns recur, is death to fear?” Through eight stanzas, the poet had me deep in thought about something more that may be out there.
In a world where powerful men leading powerful nations, vie for advantage, in a world where compassion is part of the competition … Poems of the Spirit, by Alan Harris, lays bare his heart using “Three Root Words”:
When all the words are done,
and all the gestures and looks,
I love you.
When all the miles are traveled
and all the roadblocks passed,
I love you.
When all the arguments are over
and the smile comes after gloom,
I love you.
Love abides beneath all words,
Love knows no distance.
Love dissolves every difference.
I love you.
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