Ash & Embers
Poems
James A. Zoller
Ash & Embers
Poems
The Poiema Poetry Series
Copyright © 2018 James A. Zoller. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.
Cascade Books
An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers
199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3
Eugene, OR 97401
www.wipfandstock.com
paperback isbn: 978-1-5326-3610-3
hardcover isbn: 978-1-5326-3612-7
ebook isbn: 978-1-5326-3611-0
Cataloguing-in-Publication data:
Names: Zoller, James A., author.
Title: Ash & embers : poems / James A. Zoller.
Description: Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2018. | The Poiema Poetry Series.
Identifiers: isbn 978-1-5326-3610-3 (paperback). | isbn 978-1-5326-3612-7 (hardcover). | isbn 978-1-5326-3611-0 (epub).
Subjects: LCSH: American poetry—21st century.
Classification: PS3576.O44 A94 2018 (print). | PS3576.O44 (epub)
Manufactured in the U.S.A. 04/03/18
The Poiema Poetry Series
Poems are windows into worlds; windows into beauty, goodness, and truth; windows into understandings that won’t twist themselves into tidy dogmatic statements; windows into experiences. We can do more than merely peer into such windows; with a little effort we can fling open the casements, and leap over the sills into the heart of these worlds. We are also led into familiar places of hurt, confusion, and disappointment, but we arrive in the poet’s company. Poetry is a partnership between poet and reader, seeking together to gain something of value—to get at something important.
Ephesians 2:10 says, “We are God’s workmanship . . .” poiema in Greek—the thing that has been made, the masterpiece, the poem. The Poiema Poetry Series presents the work of gifted poets who take Christian faith seriously, and demonstrate in whose image we have been made through their creativity and craftsmanship.
These poets are recent participants in the ancient tradition of David, Asaph, Isaiah, and John the Revelator. The thread can be followed through the centuries—through the diverse poetic visions of Dante, Bernard of Clairvaux, Donne, Herbert, Milton, Hopkins, Eliot, R. S. Thomas, and Denise Levertov—down to the poet whose work is in your hand. With the selection of this volume you are entering this enduring tradition, and as a reader contributing to it.
—D.S. Martin
Series Editor
For the women in my life
my mother, in memoriam
my daughter and
my daughters-in-law, strong accomplished women all
my granddaughters with confidence and prayers
and for Donna, my past my present my future
vital as the next breath
In Medias Res
If you ever climb the map again
you could stop there and whisper a few hymns
William Stafford, “Living on the Plains” [1993]
I was ashamed to ask the king for a band of soldiers and horsemen to protect us against the enemy on our way, since we had told the king, “The hand of our God is for good on all who seek him . . . .”So we fasted and implored our God for this, and he listened to our entreaty.
Ezra 8:22-23 [ESVUK]
In Medias Res
The poet regards the mirror formed by words
of his own making, and what he sees is fracture, reflections
that appear variously as trees and water;
as topography lined and chaotic with isobars;
as moments that vanish when they appear;
as the faces of his children or of others
who become his children; as the angelic
face of his beloved, honored in medias res;
as – in its own obsessive gravity – the face
behind the face he shows the world; as
– in flashes – as if he had somehow caught the sun –
burning glimpses of God that blind him
that bring him fumbling back to study its
depths. And to sing. Again. And again.
Photographs
and I was young and I heard sheepbells far off
a breeze in the almonds a voice
with its echo and a girl singing somewhere
and I thought it might be enough
W.S.Merwin, “Can Palat”
I divested myself of despair
and fear when I came here.
Jane Kenyon, “Notes from the Other Side”
The wind you walk against but do not feel is ignorance.
William Stafford, “12 September 1981,” Every War Has Two Losers
Antebellum Family Photograph (1939)
One need not move to be in motion.
A breeze tugs at hems – skirt and pant leg drift.
