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'the majesty of stillness'

(evokes the One not fractured by speech)

'

''Swans blossoming on

a pool of secrets:

the water 

isn't speaking.'

lyrical beauty

in a poem of Spirit

Just in awe. I'd like to write an essay too but 

Sigh... I'm just going to let down my guard and bask in the glory of great poetry! Bravo Ss

"There's no need for

armor when

the ground turns holy

in a drop of 

forever," 

The posting of a new poem by this Poet is always an event; always.

I have been delightedly reading, and gratefully commenting on, her poems for eighteen months now (or so).  One thing that always amazes me is the amount of motion in her poems.  Several years ago, I watched a video of a performance of the first movement of Dvorak's Ninth Symphony by the Dublin Philharmonic, and the video seemed to focus upon the action of performing (like the bowing of the string sections) as well as the music that was produced.  This added a dimension to the experience of hearing that symphony.  Patricia uses a lot of active verbs in her poetry, many of them with the "ing" suffix, so that we rarely have a static picture (like Keats' grecian urn), but rather a choreography of forces, efforts, and processes (Stevens' "Chaos In Motion"), all in a very cosmologic order.  Patricia's words dance for us; they do not strut or parade; they do not stand at attention and salute; they dance---like the first image in this poem, "The lake reassembles . . ."  She takes us right into the midst of the (always forward) motion---no chatty preamble, no preliminary invocations; literally, to use the Latin phrase, in media res, which is the way proper epics begin.

This poem's center of gravity---which is also, I suggest, one of the centers of gravity for her entire collection---is the phrase "There's no need for / armor when / the ground turns holy / in a drop of / forever . . ."  This is not only one of the MOST BRILLIANT PHRASES she has ever turned, it is also one of the MOST BRILLIANT DEFINITIONS of the purpose of poetry, of the essence of poetry, that I have ever encountered in the forty-eight years that I have been reading poetry.  READER:  MARK THIS PHRASE, AND MARK IT WELL.  Grad student:  you could write your entire dissertation on this phrase.

The troubador poets wrote aubades in which surreptitious lovers were interrupted by the light of dawn and often had to part hastily in order to avoid being caught in the act; the aubades were parting thoughts that could not have been said during a hasty retreat in different directions.  In this poem, Patricia has written a new form of aubade, and she overturns the troubador tradition to create a new purpose---for the morning light has revealed to her certain processes going on:  the lake reassembling; swans blossoming; the water entering silence; the ground turning holy; frog eyes peering, and crows being watchful---as the Poet reveals to us the secret of the Temple of One through which flows the undivided stream of being; like the river David described in the 46th Psalm.  And in that Temple, we are safe.  Patricia's aubade is not about hurried parting, or interrupted intimacy, or any of the other classical aubade situations; she, instead, chooses to make the morning a time of arriving, of becoming aware of all sorts of processes going on around her, and by implication around us; especially---and I mark the BRILLIANT PHRASE again---when and as "the ground turns holy / in a drop of / forever . . ."  

For me, personally, this poem's center of gravity has a spiritual meaning which I am going to state here, although I do not expect everyone to agree with it.  I like to think of myself as a devout---although incredibly flawed---Christian.  I accept the statements of the Bible on faith.  Some of those statements describe theophanies---moments or incidents in which the Lord appears on earth and is seen and heard.  Scripture itself would suggest that these appearances are Jesus' in His preincarnate form; and I accept that.  So when Patricia tells me that "the ground turns holy / in a drop of / forever . . ." her description not only describes a process in the Temple to which, at the poem's conclusion, she brings the reader; she is also, describing for me, a theophany, like when the Lord walked in Eden to enjoy the cool of the evening.  I do not know if she intended the poem to echo these Biblical accounts; and I do not know if she intended the poem to remind us of the 46th Psalm; and whether she did or not really does not matter.  The poem does resonate allusively to these other sources; which is a mark of its broad universality.  Patricia is a Cosmological Poet:  she casts her poetic net over not only the earth, locally; but also into the sky, to the stars, galactically.  Some decades ago, I compelled myself to read an English translation (because I have only about ten words of Latin) of Lucretius' poem, De Rerum Natura---a cosmological poem that attempts to explain all of the cosmos in terms of a single theory.  In my opinion, Lucretius is tedious, although some poets and scholars believe that, for its ambition to explain the whole of existence the poem is unmatched.  I suggest that Patricia has met, and exceeded Lucretius' achieved quality (without succumbing to his tediousness).  In those poems of hers that postpoems is privileged to publish and present, she offers her theory of everything:  not Lucretion, not Newtonian, not Platonic, not Einsteinian; but definitely PATRICIAN.  And her theory is the process in which "the ground turns holy / in a drop of / forever . . ."  That ground is the plane of our existence; whether we are reading, now, on the earth; or, in a millenia future (when her poetry will still be read), on some planet orbiting Alpha Centauri, or some space station hovering near Arcturus---the ground we stand on, or the floor we walk on, or the space we float in---all of it, in every venue, will be turning holy in order to reveal to us the drop of forever.  And---yes, I have more to say---she is also giving us a metonomy of Poetry itself; in the way that Stevens, one of her spiritual ancestors, used his poetry to comment upon Poetry.  Because Poetry, when written by a real Poet, by a cosmological Poet, is a ground that we stand on, and it turns holy right before our senses and, through those senses,reveals to our souls the presence of the drop of forever.  And THIS is why I believe that Patricia's Poetry will have a staying power that will last far beyond this site and far beyond this time frame.  During my undergrad years, Wallace Stevens' poetry was the province of specialists, while Eliot's was the generalists'.  But, in my lifestime since, I have seen Eliot's star decline and Stevens' star ascend.  You and I, reading this poem today, are standing at what will prove to be only the beginning of the Patrician star's ascent.  But, just as we cannot feel the velocity of the sun moving around the galaxy, or the galaxy itself moving forward from the original singularity, and yet those movements are constantly going on around us, so Patricia's Poetry is moving from its singularity here on postpoems (where, in my opinion, it occupies the place of primary greatness among us) toward the greatness it will someday occupy among countless readers, even those on Alpha Centauri or Arcturus who have brought Patricia's words with them.  I was not privileged to see the early process of Stevens' poetry accelerating, gathering force, coalescing into a gravitationally massive and cohesive body, and for a time I was disappointed.  But God has blessed me, in my old age and this medical decrepitude that happens to be pestering me right now, to see the acceleration and coalescence of Patricia's Poetry; and to see it in a way that I could not have understood, much less appreciated, in my undergrad days.  And what it shows me, first and foremost, is that "the ground turns holy / in a drop of / forever . . ."

Thank you, Patricia, for all your magnificent Poetry, for your cosmological vision, and for the profound wisdom with which you interpret existence for us, and show us the joy in being here, regardless of the immediate circumstances.

That said