Shards of Light and Hope: in a Darkening Time: New and Selected Poems

By Carol Thomas

Dr. Thomas holds a PhD in literature and psychology from Union University and Institute, a doctorate in applied theology from Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, and a master of arts in creative writing and poetry from Stetson University in Florida in addition to a master of arts in psychology from Saint Leo University in Florida. She has taught literature, psychology, and womens studies at the University of Connecticut, Bowie State University, and Cameron University as well as a number of additional universities and colleges. She has also taught creative writing at Gavle University in Storvik, Sweden. During her sojourn of eleven years at the University of Connecticut, she taught psychology and creative writing and enjoyed private practice with Shoreline Psychiatric Associates. In addition, for three years she was also an adjunct professor at Niantic Prison for Women. Her classes resulted in a book of original art and poetry, which was eventually published by the State of Connecticut. Dr. Thomas and her recently retired husband, Dr. Frank Thomas, a surgeon, now reside in Ormond-by-the Sea, where they are inveterate beach walkers, writers, and proud parents of their newly acquired schnauzer, Rocky, who accompanies them on their frequent walks. Including a number of published chapbooks, this will be Dr. Thomass fifth book of poetry.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Nov 27, 2013
• ISBN: 9781493145799

Carol Thomas

Carol Thomas lives in rural Canterbury and has published two previous historical novels, - Consequences, was published by HarperCollins (NZ) in 2001 and Cost of Courage, in 2003. She has previously had a novel, Dark Talisman, published in the UK by Robert Hale.

Book preview

Copyright © 2013 by Carol Thomas, Ph.D.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2013921416

ISBN:      Hardcover      978-1-4931-4578-2

                Softcover         978-1-4931-4577-5

                Ebook              978-1-4931-4579-9

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: 11/26/2013

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Contents

Brief Note to Readers

Introduction

Happiness

Life Studies

In Gratitude for Adrienne Rich

After Reading Confucius

Canyon Light

Black Kettle Grasslands

Goldenrod

Mares and Colts in a Pasture

Monday Morning in October

Letting Go

Skunk Hour

After Harvest

Green Landscape with Deer

Depending on the Prairie

Lone Wolf, Oklahoma

Sunflowers

Fall 2008

See-Through Woman

Psychotherapy 101

Magnetic Poetry

Carnival Heart

Bête Noir

Lost and Found in Translation

October 2001

Rapprochement

Tarantella

Ballad of the Dancing Woman

The Birth of God

Mixed Media

What Helen Keller Told Us

The Other Side of Ordinary

Blue Zenith

On Reading Emerson’s Essay Nature

What the Body Wants

Un jour mon roi viendra*

Displaced Person

Riddled Partings

This Is Just to Say

For My Mother

On the Road to Marvin Palmer’s Farm

In That Norwegian Kitchen

Garden Master

My Father’s Hands

April 2003

A Geometry of Echoes

On Reading Gaston Bachelard’s

The Poetics of Space

Reading Lessons

For My Mother

Gorgeous Glimpse of Calamity

Hard Times

2021

In the Land of Manicheans

Hazardous to Your Health

Life in a Time of War: The Plan Forward

December 14, 2006

First Grade, September 1947

Morning on Horseback

Prairie Drought

From Morning Pages

April 18, 2005

After an Irrelevant Election

Among the Exiles

Natural Law

Starting with the Little Things

Convoy, May 2006

Looking Anthropologically

On the Origin of Species

Riding in the Mountains

Surprise

January 21, 2008

Winter-Morning Credo

November 2006

Prairie Metaphysics

Narcissistic Poet

Winter 2006

Morning Pages

Thursday Morning, January 29, 2004

January, Winter 2005

Red-Tail Hawk in Winter

Christmas Morning 2002

Rural Life

October 2006

Old Woman

Riding Away from the Parade

Thanksgiving Day 2006

After Charles Bukowski

Epiphanies

Oil Boom

Three Guineas

For Virginia Woolf

Trying to Stay Alive in Sorrow

October 2002

Cold Prairie-Morning Chores

In a Darkening Time

Hard Bargain

After Thornton Wilder

Bone: War Zone

Blueprints

No End in Sight

Field Hands, Prairie Hands

December 2006

How Poetry Can Save a Life

Evolutionary Dance

In Honor of Merlin Stone

Poems

To the Wonder

After Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Blue Crabs

Fireflies

After Leonard Cohen

Here Comes the Dawn

Learning to Live in the World

Gypsies, Bohemians, Lovers, Radicals

From the Winter Notebooks

2013

Zen

Morning Pages

Sunday Morning

Green Prairie

Morning May 4, 2004

Flowers

Chapel, Sanctuary, Safe Harbor

Old Prairie Woman

Brown Pelicans

Negative Capability

Black Birds

Pelicans in Storm

The View from Horseback

March 2005

Ormond-by-the-Sea

A Year of Solitude

In Sweden:

At Dalhalla, Celebrating

Mandala’s Tenth Anniversary

of Freedom

Prairie Miracles

After Walter Whitman

Death Indigenous

Woman Seated before the Window

After Picasso

Water Music

Prairie Dweller

Lightness in Old Age

Neurogenesis and the Higgs Boson Particle

Insomnia

Caravan, Journey, Pilgrimage

Dog

Summer on the Prairie

Prairie Wind

After A. R. Ammons

My Real Life

Some Questions You Might Ask

After Mary Oliver

The Amish in Pennsylvania

October 6, 2006

Trying to Stay Alive in Sorrow

October 2002

Rain on the Prairie

Poetry Is Circus

This book of poems is dedicated to my late son,

Brian, whose appreciation of life, whose great heart,

and whose generosity of spirit illuminated the

poetry of this work.

We will miss him.

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Shards of Light and Hope

in a Darkening time

New and Selected Poems

Carol Thomas

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Shards of Light and Hope

in a Darkening Time

New and Collected Poems

Carol Thomas

BRIEF NOTE TO READERS

These poems are not neatly listed or divided between or among darkening times and shards of light and hope. Indeed these elements are forever intertwined in our moment-to-moment experiences of life. If, as some poets have said, the world is grounded in both radiance and cruelty, these may be but minute parts of a matrix, as far beyond our imaginings as the newly discovered Higgs boson particle. Joy, mystery, and awe must always be included, as must finitude, death, grief, sorrow, healing, and compassion.

Introduction

This book of new and selected poems emerges from four decades of daily journaling and stacks of notebooks with close and careful notations of books I have read over the years. The book represents an effort to acknowledge what has become, in contemporary American life, a culture in distress that faces, without radical and progressive change, a catastrophic future and a dying planet. Until quite recently, this was not an unequivocally doomed fate. However, in believing our own delusions and fantasies, in becoming Manichean and paranoid, and in continuing to believe in manifest destiny and predestination, we may indeed have determined the bleak and barren future that awaits us. In Alasdair MacIntyre’s second edition of After Virtue, speaking of barbarians once waiting on the frontier, he notes these barbarians have now been governing us for some time. He further suggests our cultural lack of consciousness and apathy that constitute and contribute to our immediate situation. We are engaged in ongoing wars, and our social environment includes poverty, the development of a permanent underclass, bitter class divisions, lack of health care, and most importantly, the denial of the reality of this dire situation. This does not include the catastrophic decimation of our own planet in terms of human greed, violence, and the extinction of millions of species each day.

How might we ameliorate and transform our negative attitudes concerning ethics, morals, our lost sense of decency, common sense, and compassion? How might