Old and Singing: Poems

By Gunilla Norris

"Gunilla Norris is now at the height of her powers as a poet. The poems in this new collection are sublime--one after another and another. Reading them, I can hardly catch my breath. The work is full of what I might call sorrowful joy. Ms. Norris observes life so closely and opens ordinary moments into what I can only call th

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wayfarer Books
• Release date: Nov 14, 2023
• ISBN: 9781956368734

Gunilla Norris

Gunilla Norris lives in Rhode Island. Old and Singing is her fourth book of poetry. Her second book, Joy is the Thinnest Layer, won the Nautilus gold prize for the best collection of poems in 2017. Gunilla is also the author of several books on the spirituality of the everyday. Visit her website: GunillaNorris.com.

Book preview

WWW.WAYFARERBOOKS.ORG

© 2023 TEXT BY GUNILLA NORRIS

Wayfarer Books supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing us to continue to publish books for every reader.

All Rights Reserved

Published in 2023 by Wayfarer Books

Cover Design and Interior Design by Connor L. Wolfe

TRADE PAPERBACK 978-1-956368-72-7

EBOOK 978-1-956368-73-4

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Look for our titles in paperback, ebook, and audiobook wherever books are sold. Wholesale offerings for retailers available through Ingram.

Wayfarer Books is committed to ecological stewardship.

We greatly value the natural environment and invest in conservation.

For each book purchased in our online store we plant one tree.

HOMEBOUNDPUBLICATIONS.COM & WAYFARERBOOKS.ORG

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thank you to my editor, L.M. Browning, for their generous and continued support of my writing.

Thank you to my friends, Deirdre O’Connor, Stephen Drew and my son, John Norris, for their careful reading and helpful suggestions.

Thanks to Margaret Gibson for her friendship, support and her keen poetic eye that has helped me to revise many of these poems.

Thanks, too, for devoted and thoughtful help from Tom Lagasse and Danit Fried.

Thanks to the following Poetry Journals where some of these poems were first published:

The anthology: Coming to Age for Good (Little Brown)

Crosswinds for On a Bridge, On the Way, and Reassurance

The anthology, When a Woman Tells the Truth (Many Names Press) for A New Cord

The Wayfarer for Green, Desert Indigo and Now

CONTENTS

When You Get To Be Old

Here

Six A.M.

Self Portrait with Violets

Now

Next Door

Steering All Night

Hunger

The Threshold

Unpacked in the Basement

Here Still

In the Kitchen

Peeling Apples

Between Companion Trees

For the Moment

Elsewhere

On the Way

Tending Place

On the Bridge

Memory

Out of the Belfry

Hanging in the Air

A New Cord

Cleaning the Closets

Touch

At Night

Thirst

Before the Storm

Mother’s Day

Green

Desert Indigo

Thirst

Fog

Out to Pasture

Between Two Nights

Wind

My Bewilderment

What I Came For

Negative Capability

Drought

Heat

Seeking Shelter

Lived Poems

Reassurance

Wonder

Sauntering

Sauntering

Grief Excavation: A Dream-scape

Walk-weaving

Towards the End

Acceptance

Nothing More

Old and Singing

Postcards

I Didn’t Know

What Do You Praise?

Keepsakes

Diving

Good

Dropping Anchor

Off the Leash

Five Notes: One Song

Old and Singing

The Smallest Thing

Improvisations on the Smallest Thing

About the Author

About the Press

Words can only open the door,

and we can only see on the threshold of

our incommunicable thirst after

the incomprehensible . . . the inadequacy

of the means at our disposal appears