Once in a blue moon, a love like this comes along
This collection of love poems draws us into the sacred liminal space
that surrounds death. With her beloved gravely ill, poet and activist
Minnie Bruce Pratt turns to daily walks and writing to find a way to go
on in a world where injustice brings so much loss and death. Each poem
is a pocket lens "to swivel out and magnify" the beauty in "the little
glints, insignificant" that catch her eye: "The first flowers, smaller
than this s." She also chronicles the quiet rooms of "pain and the
body's memory," bringing the reader carefully into moments that will be
familiar to anyone who has suffered similar loss. Even as she asks,
"What's the use of poetry? Not one word comes back to talk me out of
pain," the book delivers a vision of love that is boldly political and
laced with a tumultuous hope that promises: "Revolution is bigger than
both of us, revolution is a science that infers the future presence of
us." This lucid poetry is a testimony to the radical act of being
present and offers this balm: that the generative power of love
continues after death.
Oh Death
Someone sang, Oh death! Oh death! Won't you
pass me over for another day? Someone said, *I
dreamed of you last night. I dreamed you
were telling me your whole life story.*
Whole. Whorled. Welkin, winkle, wrinkle.
The loop of time holds us all together.
The pile of laundry on the bed. You
folding socks one inside the other. We
have had this day, and now this night.
The clothes are put away, and from the bed we see
the moon folding light into darkness, not death.
