Wild Honey, Tough Salt

By Kim Stafford

Wild Honey, Tough Salt offers a prismatic view of Earth citizenship, where we must now be ambidextrous. The book takes a stern look inward calling for sturdy character and supple spirit, and a bold look outward seeking ways to engage grief trouble. The book begins with poems that witness a buoyant life in a difficult world: wandering New Orleans in a trance, savoring the life of artist Tove Jansson, reading the fine print on the Mexican peso and the Scottish five-pound note. Clues to untapped energy lie everywhere by the lens of poetry. The book then moves to considerations of the worst in us—torture and war: how to recruit a child soldier? How to be married to the heartless guard? What to say to your child who is enamored by bullets? In the third section, the book offers a spangle of poems blessing earth: wren song, bud growth, river’s eager way with obstacles. And the final section offers poems of affection: infant clarities of home, long marriage in dog years, a consoling campfire in the yard when all seems lost. The book will soften your trouble, and give you spirit for the days ahead.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Red Hen Press
• Release date: Apr 23, 2019
• ISBN: 9781597098274

Kim Stafford

Kim Stafford is the founding director of the Northwest Writing Institute at Lewis & Clark College and author of eighteen books of poetry and prose, including Singer Come from Afar (Red Hen Press) and 100 Tricks Every Boy Can Do: How My Brother Disappeared (Trinity University Press). His poems have appeared in Poetry, Harpers, the Atlantic, and other magazines. His books have received Pacific Northwest Book Awards and a Citation for Excellence from the Western States Book Awards. In 2018 he was named Oregon Poet Laureate for a two-year term. He lives with his family in Portland, Oregon.

Book preview

1

ECONOMY OF MIRACLES

HOW TO SLEEP COLD IN NORTH COUNTY

You didn’t bring the bedding that you need.

Last night’s thunder cleared the sky.

Tonight, the stars could cut your tent’s

thin skin to tatters, and the moon

bullies up through the pines. Out beyond

the meadow, elk whistle and stamp.

You settle in, wearing all you’ve got.

It’s not a sleeping bag tonight,

but a thin cocoon for metamorphosis.

Make a snout, a breathing hole,

and burrow in, writhing to survive.

In darkness, cold is the blunt force

stretching time to an elastic misery

that gathers all you ever did wrong,

that tunnels through your geologic story—

you a yeasty bit in the great extinction.

Then morning comes. A sleepy robin

ladles out forgiveness. Light seeps in.

Rise, poor pilgrim, and bless the sun.

THE SECRET

After long delay, ignorant of what you guarded

before it came volcanic to your mind, there to be

hoarded smoldering until you found a way to tell it,

your secret is out—your joy too tender to entrust

to anyone, your pain too dangerous to reveal

until you do. And there it is, a birth, with blood,

to celebrate.

Then the bowl in the heart,

where such things first appear, has something

new to hide, some fingerling creature silver

in the dark, with jagged fins and tender wings

that must be gripped, locked up, suppressed, fed

crumbs as you fend off the world. Little one,

must you leave me now?

Thus we breathe our secrets one by one.

BENIGN