Spiraling Tides

by Marjorie Orr

The author Marjorie Orr begins this unusual book with the poem “as i watch the water rising” as she walks on “…the softness/of the earth now a/sponge” in “….the/swirl of tides/” taking over the land. In the poem, “Oh Shakespeare”, she laments that “things haven’t changed/since you wrote, for/the handwriting on the/wall is the same/and myths are still on/a winter’s day,/the spinal cord is now/exposed on the 5th vertebrae of a play/in a paper cut….” that hurts now as then. In the poem “cylinders of ice” she describes the “trees now naked to the/elements” that fall upon “the shivering tar/like wind chimes now/crunching underfoot” as she jogs on Mt Eagle Lane. In the poem, “the snow again falls” she laments the seasons changing to the wounds of the earth “with an urgency/of letting go of the/overfilled clouds/letting go in winter’s/prime as i in the/artificial light of/a goddess’s sight/in a fractured myth……”. The poem “the brakes are briefly” she observes “the broken/embers of those/who don’t see/the destruction of/his wake, for only/the rich are blind/and not burnt” in this now.

142 pages, Paperback

Published April 4, 2021