Katrinka Moore's WAYFARERS narrates the journeys of nomads on an Earth where people are passing through.




I don't read a lot of poetry but every time I read Katrinka Moore's work, I am not reading words on paper, I am seeing images; fleeting, miniscule, delicate, vanishing. A former dancer and choreographer, before turning to poetry, Moore's poems are constructed with subtle nuances and sudden gestures, wild movements and still forms that mirror the natural world.

Her book Numia about a wild girl in forestlands had the shock of discovery as we, like Numia, are part of nature's beauty, terror, joy in a place that hasn't a human touch. In Wayfarers (Pelekinesis, April) nomads pass through barely habitated terrain--where their purpose leads. Some seek escape, others look for a place to stay the night or just pass through. Regardless, they find beauty, danger, the eternal, or what defies human understandings. These poems are about the terrain or traces of humans among other mysteries. Evocative illustrations with text.

The book is divided into three sections: I The Rolling World, II A Crossing, III Dwelling.  Favorites   from each:



Part I
DIVINATION

Before they leave
the woodlands she cuts a forked
stick, witch hazel

ties it to her pack.
Now on the high plains she takes
it out, holds

a prong in each hand
paces, waits for the vertex lightning-
like to dip or twist--

pools of water
inside the earth, silent
as ice.

Part 2

CROW

Her mother left behind, the
river. A thousand miles
of dusty road. A crow
blocks the way, eating
carrion.  They pull around,
crush a prickley pear. She
knows to throw spilled salt,
knock on wood, but how
to stave off this dark sign?

Empty space left ajar, slive
in the margins.

Part 3

WHEN SHE DIVES

water waves mute   sound waves and
she drifts through     silent sun rays
refracted, misty   her hair unspools
slow-flapping     wings

light body buoys skyward     gravity
draws bottomward   she hovers   floats
in mote-filled quiet     going nowhere

yields  kicks  rises   breathes
awash in the air  she listens


S.W.

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