Parsons’ third collection of poems, as in his previous books, carries the reader too many geographies, both physical and cerebral. The poems, perhaps his most eclectic and revealing, return to Austin, Texas, in the turbulent and carnal sixties, the sublime Hill Country streams, north to Montana’s Mystic Lake and hallowed Indian battle grounds, and with the deftness of a wise and worldly guide, you will travel the tender valves of the heart, where all creativity finds its passion, to the very quay, that zone between reality and the possible, what Garcia Lorca called duende.

FEATHERING DEEP

After Edward Hirsch’s
“The Angel and the Demon”

I believe it to be
unlike any other
conveyance

the manner in which
it carries us in
upon its own silence

the way an idea drifts
into the grey divide
where we find ourselves

in that sacred state—easing
quietly into the dark duende
to unconscious understanding

a lone canoe at midnight—blades
paddling deep—smoothly
and deftly feathering
 
that largest of bodies