Estuaries

Estuaries
Jason Kirkey
86 pages, 8.5×8.5 full color paper­back
978 – 0-​​9835852 – 0-​​6
$17.95

The poems in this book are an attempt to speak in a common tongue with moun­tains, rivers, and forests. Too often poetry is thought of as the domain of human cre­ativity with its source in the depths of the imag­i­na­tion. We use it to speak of the world, but not to the non-​​human world — let alone with it. The poems in Estuaries sug­gest that speech and poetry are fun­da­men­tally rooted in the ecosystem — the detritus of fallen leaves, the cur­va­ture of a river bend, and the sound of rain on a heron’s wings. All of this might be regarded as the speech of the Earth. When we speak or write poetry that engages these voices we become par­tic­i­pant in the pat­terns of the water­shed.

Every region has its water­shed — the area in which all the water flows toward a dom­i­nant river and defines the char­acter of its ecology — and each water­shed, on its way out to sea, speaks its own poetry. In these times of eco­log­ical crisis we ought to listen to the voice of our habi­tats. We can join in through poetry, becoming con­so­nant with our places on this Earth. The shape of our tongues — the way the sounds roll off like rivers or scrape through our throats like stones — take on the form of the geog­raphy we inhabit.

The poems in Estuaries are accom­pa­nied by the pho­tog­raphy of James Liter, many of which were taken just for the occa­sion of this book. In pre­senting the poems along­side these pho­tographs it is not my inten­tion to usurp the images of the poem or the reader’s imag­i­na­tion but to com­ple­ment them and engage at least one more of the bodily senses. Much like an actual estuary they are the meeting of two forms of art. You can enjoy both the poems and pho­tographs as inde­pen­dent cre­ations or you might view them as a single biome.  Just as there are a variety of ways to expe­ri­ence an ecosystem, there are many ways in which Estuaries can be read.

“Come in to the reeds and rushes — there is work to do.”

{Jason Kirkey, from the Preface of Estuaries}

Estuary

There is an estuary
where streams and wild rivers meet
and mingle with the salted tides.
It gathers all the water to it
like the after­life of rain: inevitable!

I too must be an estuary of con­fluent tides—
this earth-​​body of antlered thoughts,
the decay of leaves: my branching mind.
Tumbling with stones and salmon toward the sea,
the rivers of the Earth move through me.