Habitation Of Wonder
Abigail Carroll
Habitation Of Wonder
The Poiema Poetry Series
Copyright © 2018 Abigail Carroll. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.
Cascade Books
An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers
199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3
Eugene, OR 97401
www.wipfandstock.com
paperback isbn: 978-1-5326-3025-5
hardcover isbn: 978-1-5326-3027-9
ebook isbn: 978-1-5326-3026-2
Cataloguing-in-Publication data:
Names: Carroll, Abigail
Title: Habitation of wonder / Abigail Carroll.
Description: Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2018 | Series: The Poiema Poetry Series.
Identifiers: isbn 978-1-5326-3025-5 (paperback) | isbn 978-1-5326-3027-9 (hardcover) | isbn 978-1-5326-3026-2 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: subject | subject | subject | subject
Classification: call number 2018 (paperback) | call number (ebook)
Manufactured in the U.S.A. 01/29/18
The Poiema Poetry Series
Poems are windows into worlds; windows into beauty, goodness, and truth; windows into understandings that won’t twist themselves into tidy dogmatic statements; windows into experiences. We can do more than merely peer into such windows; with a little effort we can fling open the casements, and leap over the sills into the heart of these worlds. We are also led into familiar places of hurt, confusion, and disappointment, but we arrive in the poet’s company. Poetry is a partnership between poet and reader, seeking together to gain something of value—to get at something important.
Ephesians 2:10 says, “We are God’s workmanship . . .” poiema in Greek—the thing that has been made, the masterpiece, the poem. The Poiema Poetry Series presents the work of gifted poets who take Christian faith seriously, and demonstrate in whose image we have been made through their creativity and craftsmanship.
These poets are recent participants in the ancient tradition of David, Asaph, Isaiah, and John the Revelator. The thread can be followed through the centuries—through the diverse poetic visions of Dante, Bernard of Clairvaux, Donne, Herbert, Milton, Hopkins, Eliot, R. S. Thomas, and Denise Levertov—down to the poet whose work is in your hand. With the selection of this volume you are entering this enduring tradition, and as a reader contributing to it.
—D.S. Martin
Series Editor
To my parents, who taught me wonder.
Genesis (I)
We read the Word
spoke forth creation, but
I’m not so sure it wasn’t
sung into being,
not exactly hummed,
though insects might
have appeared with hardly
an opening of the mouth.
No doubt, the sun
was spun from delicate,
yet forceful arias—thus
the operatic nature of light.
Out of a bass-line, deep
blue tones—the kind you
rarely hear until they’ve
faded into air—whales.
Ostriches sprang from
strange improvisations.
Elephants are echoes
of ancient, sacred chants.
I imagine larkspur, phlox,
and clover are the progeny
of nursery rhymes repeated
quaintly, readily, musingly,
as if sheer gratuity
were their purpose, as if
they were made for nothing
more than loveliness. Stars,
in their totality, emerged
not from a tune, but rather
a soft and knowing sound:
a buzz, a kind of celestial
purr, a note so perfectly
content with itself that
it sparked, became what
it dreamed: a universe.
Canticle (I)
To agree with the lake.
To sing and let sing
bristle grass, a white sail,
beach stones
mottling the shore
in music older
than the human ear.
To be tutored
by a bent reed,
the smooth back
of driftwood
listing, concurring.
To let nouns be nouns
the way the mountains
inhabit the grammar
of their waiting,
the way hawks
refuse to apologize
for flight.
To let in the light
like earth lets in
the shining prophecies
of rain,
like monarchs
let summer dance
gold on the open invitation
of their wings.
To brother the wind.
Not to choose between
tomorrow and today.
Not to refuse the liturgies
of the waves,
the rhetoric
of the glittering sun
spilt.
To be undone.
To note the descant
of a cloud, a cormorant,
tree crickets’ hum,
the signature
of glaciers scrawled
on lichen rock.
To defer to the willow.
Not to prefer ignorance
to the theories of swallows,
the