Looking for Luck: Poems Book

People (her daughter, a poet friend, and a lover, among others), places (far away lands, beaches, her farm and forests, among others), creatures large and small (an elephant, a bear, horses, and dogs, among others), plants, trees, work, leisure, times of stress and times of delight . . . all fall under the watchful, wise gaze of Maxine Kumin. She brings her observations and insights to us with clarity and wonder and offers them to us for our own puzzling-out and pondering. Her opening prologue quote from Howard Nemerov gives us a compass for the territory she'll be covering and offers us a bearing to get us started as we enter these poems:

PROLOGUE

O swallows, swallows, poems are not
The point. Finding again the world,
That is the point. Where loveliness
Adorns intelligible things
Because the mind's eye lit the sun.

(Howard Nemerov, as quoted in Looking for Luck: Poems, Maxine Kumin, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, originally published: 1992, paperback edition: 1993, p. 13)

Windows into the world? Trails hacked out through the busyness of life? Gaps or breaks in the fog where we catch greater clarity? "Finding again the world . . ." "That is the point!"

I offer up CREDO as a favorite from this collection and one I'll carry with me for many days to come:

CREDO

I believe in magic. I believe in the rights
of animals to leap out of our skins
as recorded in the Kiowa legend:
Directly there was a bear where the boy had been

as I believe in the resurrected wake-robin,
first wet knob of trillium to knock
in April at the underside of earth's door
in central New Hampshire where bears are

though still denned up at that early greening.
I believe in living on grateful terms
with the earth, with the black crumbles
of ancient manure that sift through my fingers

when I topdress the garden for winter. I believe
in the wet springs of earthworms aroused out of season
and in the bear, asleep now in the rock cave
where my outermost pasture abuts the forest.

I cede him a swale of chokeberries in August.
I give the sow and her cub as much yardage
as they desire when our paths intersect
as does my horse shifting under me

respectful but not cowed by our encounter.
I believe in the gift of the horse, which is magic,
their deep fear-snorts in play when the wind comes up,
the ballet of nip and jostle, plunge and crow hop.

I trust them to run from me, necks arched in a full
swan's S, tails cocked up over their backs
like plumes on a Cavalier's hat. I trust them
to gallop back, skid to a stop, their nostrils

level with my mouth, asking for my human breath
that they may test its intent, taste the smell of it.
I believe in myself as their sanctuary
and the earth with its summer plumes of carrots,

its clamber of peas, beans, masses of tendrils
as mine. I believe in the acrobatics of boy
into bear, the grace of animals
in my keeping, the thrust to go on.

(Maxine Kumin, Looking for Luck: Poems, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, originally published: 1992, paperback edition: 1993, p. 15-6)

In this poem I've found my New Year's resolution for 2017: "living on grateful terms
with the earth."