“tender gravity”–a gem of a book by Marybeth Holleman

Marybeth Holleman’s book tender gravity was my companion on a recent hike in Avalanche Canyon in Grand Teton National Park, and what fine company it was, contributing to the feeling of well-being that is mine whenever I make it back to that blessed place. The images in her poems arise mainly from the Alaskan wilds that are her home ground, but they were equally apt for the wilderness of Avalanche. Like her, I am a “heavy footed intruder” in a wonder-world where “flowers pour down either side of steep-falling waters, a long billowing scarf,” and “shadows [of boulders] tumble / at my feet, cascading space / weighted by invisible cloudsong.” The black bears of Avalanche, whose only concern was to gorge on berries, did not make my heart leap like the one she describes in “thoughts on a black bear, charging,” but they shared the same mindset: “she does not wish us harm / i do not wish her harm. / i wish to pass, unharmed, along the trail.”

Her poem “want” expressed beautifully why we seek out wild places: “We want to feel the winds of wilderness / in the cells of our bodies …we want / passage. Passage / into another kind of life, one not / encumbered by the little dramas / we create…”

And in “Refugium,” a poem of gratitude addressed to a mountain that has guarded and sheltered her, I found a beautiful expression of why we return year after year to our most special places. I quote it in full:

Refugium

At dusk, when the light

falls away from your slopes

and the line of your rippled ridge

sharpens against the golden

afterglow from the setting sun,

you with your halo don’t go,

watch over me as I lay upon

your soft treed arms and let

the cooling breeze of night

descend upon me, spent.

I climbed so long to get here,

to reach the ridgeline of your lips,

to fall to my knees in wonder

at all that lies at your feet, vast

in all directions. More than I can

hold in my arms, say with my

tongue, more, I want to stay

on your sturdy shoulders and wait

out the storm sure to come, the one

we have set upon ourselves with

our desire to have, to have, to have.

Marybeth is one of only two writers whose work has appeared in all five issues of Deep Wild Journal. To learn more about the book and to get a copy to bring along on your own journeys to wild places, visit https://www.marybethholleman.com/tender-gravity. Thank you, Marybeth!