The Heronry

December 19, 2016
In an understated 11th collection
from Jarman (Bone Fires), faith reveals its
multiform and complex nature through the people the poet meets. “Faith is like
fiberglass, a rag toughened by resin,” he writes, yet it is also like “water, a substance, stormy or pacific.” With precision and tenderness, Jarman explores the sinew and soul of humankind: “Mortality and laughter,/ the sad and funny fact that you will die/ and that you’ve made your children, they will die./ Do they hold that against you? Strangely, no.” In the book’s second section, “Believers, Unbelievers,” Jarman produces a series of graceful character portraits, including one of a woman whose church-elder husband confesses to adultery, and another of the neighborhood’s eccentric self-styled philosopher. The third and final section finds Jarman exploring specific moments in scripture and places in his past. “Tiel Burn” takes the name of a river in Scotland where Jarman spent formative childhood years and which he rediscovered on Google Earth. Jarman’s river becomes an analogue of the faith he explores: “I have to act as if I never knew it/ was always present, always passing through,/ on its way to the shifting place of change/ that turns from fresh to salt, and worlds divide,/ giving to the sea its gift—itself.”