Synkroniciti is pleased to welcome back poet D.R. James from Michigan with three poems. “Celestial Elbow” recounts a dazzling sunset, painted with fricatives, sibilants and alliteration as evocative as brushstrokes on canvas or drumhead, rhythm and imagery united. “Gift after gift from ginger tongues, then glow/ audible like visions.” D.R. wonders at the triteness and ill will behind many human memories, eclipsed by this transcendent scene. Continuing in this vein, “Walking the Beach, We Show Our Ignorance About Stars, Constellations” draws a parallel between the ancient stars of the night sky, some of which are long dead, and the voices preserved in history, literature and culture. Humanity as a whole does not get substantially kinder, wiser or more intelligent and “the discerning words/ of the long gone/ still illumine our forever/ primitive way.” “Another Time, This Same Moon” is a personal reflection on the mutability of human relationships and the way love can turn into hate. “…How could/ once watching waves etching a shore/ have also meant the meanest goodbye/ would eventually roll its own way in?” These are delicate, spare poems, tinged with the kind of regret that comes from an abundance of hope. It isn’t possible to fulfill every potential or to soak in only goodness, but the experience has value, even when it is painful.
Experience D.R.’s illuminating poetry in Synkroniciti’s November 30th issue, “Space,” Vol. 5, No. 4, available for purchase here: https://synkroniciti.com/the-magazine/purchase-individual-issues/.
Recently retired from nearly 45 years of teaching college writing, literature, and peace studies, D.R. James lives, writes, vegges, and cycles with his psychotherapist wife in the woods near Saugatuck, Michigan. His latest of ten collections are Mobius Trip and Flip Requiem (Dos Madres Press, 2021, 2020), and his prose and poems have appeared in a wide variety of print and online anthologies and journals.