By Light and Hidden Matter

By Lynne Goldsmith

By Light and Hidden Matter is a celebration of the natural world--a poet's response of gratitude and reverence for all the workings of the universe, for all that's seen and unseen and all that's yet to be discovered. Lynne gives voice to some of the everyday miracles, mystery, and interplay of life here on Earth and beyond--the coexistence and transformation of a diversity of natural phenomena in different stages of being.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Release date: Nov 3, 2022
• ISBN: 9781666759624

Lynne Goldsmith

Lynne Goldsmith is a licensed and certified therapist/counselor. She is the author of Secondary Cicatrices (2019), The Story of Doves (2021), The Story of Doves: Part Two (2021), Critters in the Neighborhood Come and See with Me (2021), Birdseye Chronicles (2018) and By Light and Hidden Matter(2023). Lynne's first poetry book, Secondary Cicatrices, won seven honors. Wipf and Stock published her second poetry collection, By Light and Hidden Matter, in 2022. She won a 2023 Honorable Mention in the Nature/Flower non-professional category of the International Photography Awards for her photograph of a sunflower, viewable at https://www.photoawards.com/winner/zoom.php?eid=8-1686636415-23

Book preview

Rock

Tor

You are what’s left behind:

pillows of rock worn,

joints defined,

topsoil gone

after pressure release,

freeze-thaw,

chemical weathering

has taken your sides

their joints close enough

to fall away into scree

to happen again

is just a matter of time.

Scree

From cliff face, rock falls

to an angle of repose

for suiting itself.

Rubble waits

for more of shaking up,

ice within mountain slopes,

water freezing

to make new cracks

maybe even to break rocks.

Either way, however it happens,

cliff degrades

through stressors:

biotic, chemical,

thermal, topographic.

Glacier to be covered.

Scree to layer,

slope to become mantled.

Burying occurs at all levels.

Mountain Ice: Snow Pack

Freeze-thaw bursts the rocks.

Rotational shift occurs.

Above the glacier, scree falls

to debris below on valley floor.

Rocks scrape and scour.

Plucking occurs (rocks breaking off)

creating steep back walls (mountainside)

with armchair-shaped hollow.

Glacier moves through corrie

down into U-shaped valley.

Interlocking spurs crashed through,

moraine working. Tarns formed above

in corrie

with erratic stones settling below

in glacial trough.

Ice melted

thousands of years ago—

Last Age of Ice.

Sierra Nevada: Volcanic Arc, Inactive Subduction Zone

Through magma chambers cooled I walk

over Jurassic stone, batholith, granite

that rose—may have—

plutons from underground

formed 200 million years ago

to be eroded now, into peaks,

sliding plates done, tectonics at rest

(that once pushed)

delamination perhaps,

of batholith losing its base—eclogite

holding keel down for heaviness

the mountains, the range,

land to the east

dropping away

I am roaming with history

by volcano’s opening

to explosions that blew

laccoliths into distance

rounding the sharpnesses

I feel—

stocks and dikes of rising, striving

to hold their place—

find their escape in surfacing

to breathe

their solidness

from fires reaching

above what is

the mantle.

Plant

Plant Strategy

It’s not the pollinator

but adaptive plant rather

maneuvering