Closer: Poems

By Albert W. Starkey

Vibrantly imaginative and starkly honest, Closer takes the reader into realms that most of us are hesitant to traverse. Al shows us it is worth taking the journey into spiritual doubt, to face images of death and to bear the loss of our own bearings. His poetry carries us deeply into places where we can touch love along with her inescapable companions-- grief, gratitude, suffering and redemption. With his gifted capacity to bring meaning into paradox, Al gives us poetry that moves into darkness lightly and opens the way into the mysteries of the myriad losses and renewals we experience in this life. Amplified by the beautiful illustrations of John Francis, this poetry rises like a thin wind over an oceans ever shifting tides.

Praise for Closer

There is a line that I love in this collection: I cant turn blood into ink. That is exactly what Al does in his poems: he turns the blood he has shed and feels in his veins and translates it all into words, poems, ink; he turns the sea into ink, dreams into ink, children, grandchildren, hope, loss, mountains, grief, peonies, birds - all into ink and that is his art.
Suzie Ryan
Editor, Desert Call

This is a collection of reflections on the most difficult journey the search for meaning in life for a sensitive human being- a journey looking for and being looked for. The beauty of language is picked with care and the love of a true poet moulding the poems into a thing of elegance and of haunting reverberations. There are yearnings, memories and glances into moments of deep pain and moments of pure beauty intermingling, even in the same sentence. These poems expose the deepest emotions and allow a glimpse into the soul.

Margaret Scollan
Spiritual Director, County Sligo, Ireland

There is a beautiful use of language in these poems such that the words take on a power of their own an event, a punctuation, can change your life. There is a common thread here: a glimpse into the mystical, moving far away to find something close by and getting tragically lost or tantalisingly, nearly found.

Liam Scollan
Homeopathic Physician and Founder of Mentorprise

These poems each stand as an individual personality in their own wisdom and strength. I would even describe one or two as Monoliths. I found I could not rush through them and indeed, had to put them down and let certain phrases just circulate and dialogue with my own experiences in this fractured world. Als work is very journeyed on a human level and he is a very articulate and personable travel guide as he maps out the terrain anecdotally and otherwise. The familiarity and honesty around human 'being' including its suffering and spiritual salvation strike at the 'deep heart's core' of me... Hard to define...not always easy or pleasant, definitely not...but always sure-footed, rich and finely tuned.
Clare Lynch
Author of Life Through the Long Window

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Nov 27, 2013
• ISBN: 9781493129836

Albert W. Starkey

Albert Starkey is a past winner of The Atlanta Reviews International poetry competition, a winner of the International Library of Poetrys Open Poetry Contest and most recently, a winner of the 2016 Carriage House Poetry Prize of Tiferet Journal. His poetry has been published in several journals, magazines and two anthologies. It has also been exhibited in Cape Cod art galleries and twice aired on NPRs WCAI, Poetry Sunday in 2017. He is the author of four other collections of poetry titled, On Eireanns Edge, Moonrise Soon, Blue Music and Closer. Al and his wife, Susan have lived for extended periods in their much beloved Ireland over the past fifteen years. They currently reside in the village of Yarmouth Port, Massachusetts.

Book preview

Copyright © 2013 by Albert W. Starkey.

Front Cover Photo: Skellig Michael, County Kerry, Ireland by Susan D. Starkey. Mixed media enhancement by John Francis.

Back Cover Photo: Valentia Island, County Kerry, Ireland by Susan D. Starkey.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Rev. date: 11/25/2013

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris LLC

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

[e-mail]

133885

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Punctuation

Fragment

Winter Sun on Desert Snow

If I Am

Faith As I Know It

Exit, Stage Left

Trade Offs

The Man at Home

In a Closet with Someone Else’s Clothes

The Sound of Candles Burning

Bottom Fishing

Portside at Dusk

Ocean State

Nauset Beach

First Encounter Beach, Eastham, Massachusetts

Driftwood

Come Away Alone

Below Sea Level

Bay Side

Essex Ground

Peace Dale

Generations

Down There in the Hollow

If

Closer

Homeward Bound

Nostalgia

Border Crossing

A Dream at Sixty-Two About Living to Ninety-Three

Locked Away in Saint-Rémy

Unsculpted

Shadow Lands

A Dream About Basements

The Abbey

A Disagreeable Dream

Sniffing For a Few Words

Rescue Dog

Fiona

Grief

Where We Find Ourselves

retrospective:

The Crippling Truth

The Big Yellow Bus

Kabbalah

Speech Therapy

Depression

Transference in Red and Blue

Birds On City Wires

The End of January

Wednesday

On Either Side of the Fence

Untitled

A Weathervane in Spring

Cityscape

The Color of Peonies

Blossoms

Two Intuitions

Always and Never

For an Instant

Storm

A Mountain Called Blanca

Stillness is Full of Demands

The Half-Finished Heaven

Finding Jane Kenyon

A Late Season

An Alliteration of Days

Last Wish

What It Could Be Like On the Last Night

An End to Poetry

Epitaph

About the Author and Illustrator

Also by Albert Starkey:

On Eireann’s Edge

Far Afield

Moonrise Soon

Blue Music

Unnamed Haiku

The Unsayable

Has finally found a way

To the empty page.

PUNCTUATION

Events punctuate

And punctuation matters

I don’t believe God has left me

I don’t believe. God has left me

The pen as it writes creates the event

The paper receiving it holds the memory

What’s next is the prospect of punctuation

And whether things will be modified

Or brought summarily to an end

2_fragment_facing.jpg

FRAGMENT

Just the way the leaves bend, there

Coaxing their branches along with them

On a mid-summer’s breeze, lifting

What is soft and warm onto us

A lingering dis-ease swept away

To the place from whence it came

Beyond all self-understanding

Simply bending now to what is given

WINTER SUN

ON DESERT SNOW

After a night of traipsing

Across an inexhaustible sky

The stars have found a way

To shine on snowy ground.

We’ve come down from lofty places

To make our constellations

Upon the earth that’s given to us

As if we were both here and there.

If you say you will be with me again

I will bring that