Welcome to Litsy!

Not an unenjoyable collection of poems, and several have striking visual and emotional images, but there felt too much for me that was impenetrable and oblique to really get into. I did particularly like 'George and the Dragon', though.

What lost realm of desires
foregone, a body slipping from his grasp,
the way a guddled trout might shiver free
just at the very last: that lovely
emptiness it leaves
between the hands
a puzzle of warmth
and marrow swimming away
to everywhere,
a stream inside the stream
of light and water, single, almost free.

- "Handfasting"

"Too much is being
sacrificed, the dragon with its throat
transpierced, a sign
left over from the damp, pre-Christian world,
led from the cave on its chain (the woman holds it
lightly in her hand) to be destroyed
for no good reason, given that it's tame
and captive now.
Perhaps it's just too green
or too expressive, set against this knight
whose mind is elsewhere, blank as ordinance
and formal, like the host, or like
??

"The boy is balanced on his skates, a kind
of beauty in the act of concentration.
We all have days like this, the quiet mind
dispensing with care to the greater or lesser extent
that circumstance allows."

- "Henderick Avercamp: A Standing Man Watching a Skating Boy"

“I want to venture a hypothesis that, roughly expressed, goes like this: you cannot learn to love yourself until you find something in the world to love; no matter what it is. A dog, a garden, a tree, a flight of birds, a friend...Because what we love in ourselves is ourselves loving.”

(Not from tagged book. Doesn't it annoy you when Goodreads 'librarians' don't tag the book they're quoting from?)