From Sequence by A.F. Moritz
From Sequence
by A.F. Moritz
Every step was into a new world
drenched in memory and longing: these were the dew there.
The sun sparkled in it, the low sun
that pierced the tips of the oak crowns
on the eastern, the far-side banks. A sparkling
that never would leave us, that later we’d know again
in the splendour of a breast shining in lace,
the stirring of birds by the creek,
the fluttering in our struck heart. The sun
shone through the drops of memory,
and the child was wet, chilled,
and warmed. The child we were.
He and she purred in nerves and muscles
and brought their eyes close to the places
they could see in the drops, some of the new worlds
of the place where we’d halted for the morning.
The latest collection from Griffin Poetry Prize-winning poet A. F. Moritz.
In Sequence, the reader accompanies the poet step after step and breath after breath through a haunting and mercurial world that shimmers like sun on sand. Alternating moments of spare clarity with deep narrative flashes, the poem wanders the borders of the self, pursuing the eternal moment through imagined landscapes and the lush world waiting outside the writer’s window. This is poetry of intense observation, finely tuned to a pattern that is sustained with breaks and returns, alive with eros and a hunger for Breton’s “convulsive beauty.”
Sequence dazzles as it seeks the great mystery, while remaining fully invested in our life of contingency and time.
