Songs of Gems and Bones

By Michelle Rebidoux

This collection of song-like poems has as its overarching theme the mystery-filled relationship between two worlds: the spiritual and the earthly realms invoked by the two key terms in the book's title: gems and bones. It is difficult most of the time to separate these two worlds, and the poems serve to communicate the author's experience of the tensions, the ecstasies, even the humor which unfold with their intertwining. The various dimensions of that experience are reflected in the organization of the "songs" into six sub-thematic chapters: songs from the garden; of death and falling; of griping and wrestling; of vision; of striving; of love and cleaving. While deeply personal, the poems nevertheless struggle towards a mode of expression of the spiritual life on earth appealing to readers of diverse religious backgrounds.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Release date: Mar 29, 2023
• ISBN: 9781666770766

Michelle Rebidoux

A native of southern Ontario, Michelle Rebidoux studied art, philosophy, and religious studies at various Canadian universities, receiving her PhD in religion and culture from McGill University in 2008. She currently resides in St. John’s, Newfoundland, where she teaches religious studies at Memorial University and theology at Queen’s College. Her first book of poetry, The Last Thing Is Longing, was published in 2021.

Book preview

Songs from the Garden

Just When I Thought

Just when I thought I could

no longer breathe

or lift up either of my wings—

Look there! she said to me,

pointing skyward,

Fall in love with that bird!

Fruiting Trees

It was something about an orchard,

something about a dream

in which suddenly the fecundity

of a great density of fruiting trees

made me pregnant again with my old longing.

And those who entered into that place—

into that orchard, into my longing—

well, they wondered whether the end of the world

or the very beginning it was

that they were seeing there.

One went mad.

One grew callous and blasphemed.

Another (whom I understood best of all) died there.

And one (whom I understood least) was at peace

in a lushness so unfathomable of space and time

that he knew the breath of trees.

But all I knew was that a blameless breeze

blew as if a wind from gods through that garden

gusted, and I felt it in my reins.

It ignited in me once more that old tender pain,

and I suffered the fecundity of fruiting trees.

Bird of the Forest

One day

a tree sprung up

right in the middle

of my garden.

The next day

another green shoot

burst forth

inside of one of my rooms.

Today I felt

a stirring within,

as of earth giving way

to roots in my heart.

Soon I’ll be

a forest myself,

dense and adorned

with the growth of Eden—

and there, deep-nestling

under boughs like

heavenly mantles’ blooms,

a bird sweet-trilling

with golden plumes

will sing to tell me

of Your love.

The Web

O! what a glory!

Light of the evening’s sun

adorns a magnificent

spider’s web spun

stretched between

two trees of my garden—

heroic, triumphant

in its craftsmanship,

inspired truth of that

great Weaver Supreme!

I moved around it carefully

while watering the green,

making sure to give it a berth.

But then, as is so oft

the way upon this earth,

I let my mind wander off

to some far place—

until, alas! I felt the web

break across my face,

destroying a labour

to me insurmountable.

And yet no god, it seems,

holds me accountable,

save that I offer up

a small penance with this poem—

while the spider begins again

to spin its home.

Gardener’s Guilt

Alas! that in my garden,

for my flowers to be well,

many small beings I must make to die.

Theirs is a world of immersed eating.

They have no concept of who I am.

They do not even fear me

when I come at them with

the unlovely intention of their non-being.

I am their hyper-object,

vague undulation among waves

of unimaginable busyness and hummings,

white noises and shades

moving in and out of their horizon.

They do not even shrink from me

when I come close so as to

obliterate their horizon.

And neither do they know

that I do not do so without remorse,

nor that a little poem,

writ by a hyper-heart in that deep guilt

required of all good gardeners,

does not excuse the fact that I have

killed them for the sake of my flowers.

Blue Flower

They say the Buddha gave a sermon

just by holding up a flower,

revealing form as formlessness,

a quivering spaciousness pregnant with the light.

Yet in that light, I think You also