This Eye Is for Seeing Stars
When she’s raising a young child, a mother’s day often finds her of two minds: one, not so different from other women; the other, sharing the eyes, ears, and minute-by-minute miracles that come with her flesh and blood experiencing reality for the first time. In this collection, Christine Poreba is unable to contain her gratitude for being invited along by her starry-eyed son. The author of two prize-winning collections—The Philip Levine Prize and The Orison Poetry Prize—Poreba is a New Yorker living in Chicago by way of Florida. She works at a public library.
Diary
Summers in Florida, sunshine was always losing to thunder
and we were beholden to its constant interruption—
even when it didn’t come, its possibility kept us in—
thick clouds poised and stretching dark above the pool,
though the swim team still changed into suits, began their drills
whether the whistles would or wouldn’t sound.
Daily, I sketched the hydrangea outside my window—
watching what I knew would come up from its unseen root,
through its stick of a stem to a single celestial bloom,
would unfold despite petals drying and the wear of cold—
to know for the next year where the thin green sprout
would lead, grown as much by instinct as by illumination.
The light was an ink filling the darkness and held
what I won’t forget of gardens, of the wide oaks
and bodies of blossoms which I drew within the confines
of the penciled boxes I allotted them,
their shape without their color, a flipbook of a form
that rises, falls, rises, blossoms, falls, rises, holds, holds—.
Reviewed by
Matt Sutherland
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