There is a softness at work in Abegail Morley’s second collection, Snow Child, published by Pindrop Press.  Words appear on the page with the crisp crunch of footsteps on fresh snow.  Opening the book, the outside world is suddenly muffled, distant.  This is a world of unexpected silences, where what is said really matters, and what is unsaid, matters even more.

One of the main themes of the book is stated in the title of the opening poem, Unstable.  Instability is at work everywhere here.  There is little to hold on to that is guaranteed not to move.

 

Quite unexpectedly this morning
I splashed my inner light
on the hallway floor…

This inner light is a visible tangible thing,

dangerous in its beauty.

 

The poet echoes Yeats with this knowledge of beauty’s danger and power.  This inner light, for her, and perhaps for all of us, is that which holds us to ourselves, losing it disturbs our gravity.  This inner light is fragile, essential, it defines us all, it is the Essential Self, something beyond our daily lives, outside of who we are.  It is something that we can be separated from.  Behind this delicate poem is a sense of despair.  If we lose our light, who are we?

Unstable is a poem of seven short lines that acts as a stone thrown into a pool; its ripples spread wide.
Human beings in this collection, are essential, god-like in their power, but with none of the pomposity of the Gods, as in When You Visit.

 

you let the sun tilt its light, hold it globe-like in your hands,
ease its axis to the left, to the right, as you roll it,

from hand to hand.

 

Among these god-like humans, there is a tenderness , an intimacy.  The relationships have a gentleness:

 

We loosened our fingers…
stroking the weed caught on its side;
it was soft, like a child’s hair.

 

Relationships offers an escape from the world:

 

come here for me
We can walk away from the din.

 

But this fine collection is filled with sadness, for despite the invitation, lovers, though always loved, always leave.  This is grief, observed, with a scientist’s detachment.  Relationships have a built in senescence.  At the outset, there is nostalgia, as, in the poem, I learn this from him:

 

Give yourself totally to another until time moves on.

 

In this short poem, footsteps in the snow, ink stains on a page, the full sweep of a relationship is conjured up.  This is a relationship that is destined for failure from the beginning, sadness there at its inception.  Give yourself totally, with abandonment, holding nothing back, until it’s over.

In these relationships the Self is flayed, filleted.  In Angler,

 

He takes a skinning knife – I’m tiny boned;
bone on this boniness.  Later, my eyes
solidify and chink on the plate.

 

Love and death, bone and chink, the fragility of the subject in this poem breaks and shatters.

What is heart-breaking in these poems is the poets knowledge that this is always destined to be as in Wait:

 

I never said
time lied to us.  I knew it gave

what it could and took back
what it wanted, leaving me hanging on.

 

Vowels and consonants in this line, finish echoing, swinging in mid-air.  The ‘n’ like the sound of a temple bell, its tone quietly continuing to reverberate until it finally dies.

The poem Blackberry Picking announces itself on the page with a joyous confidence,

 

This morning she sets out early…

 

Both title and time of day, promise a refreshing change for the poet.  But she finds there is no getting away from

 

her shadow, still short from the night,

 

and now it is her shadow who leads the way, inviting her to follow.  She follows her Shadow and although Nature in this poem is vibrantly, passionately experienced,

 

grasses waving in slow motion,
brambles spilling over hedges –

 

after barely two lines of respite, the poet is again aware of

 

sharp, spiny thorns,

that

mourn the broken flower buds.

 

It is inevitable to when blackberry juice mingles with blood in her palm.  The essence of life co-mingling with its shadow.

 

Reading this collection,

I feel it gather itself, a small hush around me
and its silence rings loud.

 

This perfect collection is a welcome respite, allowing us all a time in the snowy woods, a chance to walk away from the din.

 

 

The Snow Child is published by Pindrop Press, 2011 and priced at £8.99.  Order your copy here