Sacred Precinct
by
Jacqueline Kudler
“This book is life in itself. Here, a close self-regard; there, a wider
regard of the world—each poem precise, often scalpel sharp, always keen in
its music, always wise. . . . Sacred Precinct is a large book, every poem
in it earned.”
— Gerald
Fleming
JACQUELINE KUDLER lives in Sausalito,
California, and teaches classes in writing and literature at the College
of Marin, Kentfield. Her poems have appeared in numerous literary reviews
and anthologies. An avid hiker, she published Walking from Inn
to Inn (East Wind Press) in 1986, and cowrites a local
hiking column for the Pacific Sun newspaper. Sacred
Precinct is her first collection of poems.
POEMS FROM Sacred Precinct
Words
First, of course,I love you,
then, the requisite indulgences:
You
may take two pieces
You may take a recess
You may take three giant
steps.
There are words with indefinite referents:
freedom beauty
unicorn God
and words with referents definite beyond dispute
clay
cucumber
unicorn
God.
There are phrases that deliver us from dailiness:
extended sea
voyage
phrases we seem to wait forever for:
it's a go it's a boy
it's benign
and if, at the end, words also fail us,
still, there are
terms
we'd be hard put
to refuse:
after a long, inspired
life
after a brief illness
after an extended sea voyage.
Instead of Nothing
“. . . from the very fact that something exists instead of
nothing,
there is in possible things . . . a claim to existence.”
G. W. Leibniz
Principles of Nature and of Grace founded on
Reason
The morning the rain came
down in feathered drum riffs
on
the bedroom roof, and under
the kitchen eaves shimmer
and bounce and spreading
circles of oh and
three brown
birds rocking
on feeder perches, sputter of
yellow leaves on slick
black
branches something
wool socks steaming on heat
vents, wheat toast and apple
tea a good day to stay
inside, air everywhere
inlit extra
dimension
of dark a good
day to sort last summer's
photos gather wool
jackets from
the downstairs
closet, ponder quantum
fluctuations, gutters
running slow
slide
of glitter down
glass panes a good
day
to do (instead of)
nothing.
