A Dark Wood (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9798899902307)

By turns autobiographical, lyrical, meditative, these closely observed, fine-tuned poems in A Dark Wood consider the impermanence in our lives and give us an appreciation of those moments when wonder prevails: "Imagine catching such light, like painting air / or the atmosphere before it shifts..." In the collection's title poem " A Dark Wood, 1946," the speaker, recently returned from WWII, finds solace in his beloved woods: "These deer my brothers and / sisters, the mirror of God St. Francis said." These poems try to "catch the light" of transcendence, the joy and sorrow in shared human experience-childhood, family, marriage, nature, aging, and loss.