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    Habitation of Wonder
    Habitation of Wonder
    Habitation of Wonder
    Ebook112 pages6 hours

    Habitation of Wonder

    By Abigail Carroll

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    About this ebook

    Habitation of Wonder is an offering of poems that travels the intersection of the natural landscape and the landscape of spirit. Here, the moon is a "white comma / in the breath of space." Crocuses are "ephemeral prophets, first of the sun's spring projects." The ocean is "a vast / perpetual sacrifice on the altar / of the shell-glittering shore." The collection opens with "Genesis," a reimagining of the creation story with song as the divine instrument of creation. Five themed sections flow from "Genesis" like a musical thread, investigating the material elements from which we originate and in which we take shelter, as well as the gifts of language and faith, which make us more than merely "a constellation of salts." In its own way, each poem invites the reader to "tenant beauty"--as well as to tenant uncertainty. When beauty and uncertainty collide, they spark wonder. As these poems suggest, wonder is simply another name for the world in which we live--and the world that lives in us.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCascade Books
    Release dateJan 18, 2018
    ISBN9781532630262
    Habitation of Wonder
    Author

    Abigail Carroll

    Abigail Carroll is author of Habitation of Wonder (2018),A Gathering of Larks: Letters to Saint Francis from a Modern-Day Pilgrim (2017) and Three Squares: The Invention of the American Meal (2013). She lives and writes in Vermont.

    Read more from Abigail Carroll

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      Book preview

      Habitation of Wonder - Abigail Carroll

      Genesis (I)

      We read the Word

      spoke forth creation, but

      I’m not so sure it wasn’t

      sung into being,

      not exactly hummed,

      though insects might

      have appeared with hardly

      an opening of the mouth.

      No doubt, the sun

      was spun from delicate,

      yet forceful arias—thus

      the operatic nature of light.

      Out of a bass-line, deep

      blue tones—the kind you

      rarely hear until they’ve

      faded into air—whales.

      Ostriches sprang from

      strange improvisations.

      Elephants are echoes

      of ancient, sacred chants.

      I imagine larkspur, phlox,

      and clover are the progeny

      of nursery rhymes repeated

      quaintly, readily, musingly,

      as if sheer gratuity

      were their purpose, as if

      they were made for nothing

      more than loveliness. Stars,

      in their totality, emerged

      not from a tune, but rather

      a soft and knowing sound:

      a buzz, a kind of celestial

      purr, a note so perfectly

      content with itself that

      it sparked, became what

      it dreamed: a universe.

      WATER

      Canticle (I)

      To agree with the lake.

      To sing and let sing

      bristle grass, a white sail,

      beach stones

      mottling the shore

      in music older

      than the human ear.

      To be tutored

      by a bent reed,

      the smooth back

      of driftwood

      listing, concurring.

      To let nouns be nouns

      the way the mountains

      inhabit the grammar

      of their waiting,

      the way hawks

      refuse to apologize

      for flight.

      To let in the light

      like earth lets in

      the shining prophecies

      of rain,

      like monarchs

      let summer dance

      gold on the open invitation

      of their wings.

      To brother the wind.

      Not to choose between

      tomorrow and today.

      Not to refuse the liturgies

      of the waves,

      the rhetoric

      of the glittering sun

      spilt.

      To be undone.

      To note the descant

      of a cloud, a cormorant,

      tree crickets’ hum,

      the signature

      of glaciers scrawled

      on lichen rock.

      To defer to the willow.

      Not to prefer ignorance

      to the theories of swallows,

      the languages of the air.

      To enter the concert,

      the stirring,

      the singing,

      the way the bulrush enters

      its blooming,

      the way sky enters

      the glow of evening,

      the green-turning-flame

      of its song.

      The Calling

      And so it is, the lake is calling you,

      dropping in your ear the small consonants

      of its lapping. There is no resisting.

      It insists on shivering water into light.

      You have beheld this silver before.

      In dreams, it’s the radiance you wear.

      The jangle of shroud against mast:

      a language you have come to understand.

      It has let you in on its secret. So too

      has the dark slipping by of the cormorant.

      Soft, the verbiage of a passing

      kayak, the lisp of the paddle’s dip and rise,

      the narrow body’s thin blue glide.

      A word has perched on your tongue, but

      refuses to be formed, tastes like

      storm-rinsed sky, the wind-downed

      rhetoric of pines imitating the slow dance

      of waves. Acquainted with all manner of

      waiting, the dock grows patient

      with your sitting, your staring, your curious

      forward-leaning. Listen: water

      tapping, pulling at the hull, the metal siding

      on the plank-wood pier. It circles out

      from your dangling ankles, a

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