The Memory Orchard

In Tim Bowling's poems, memory is much more than a sally down landmark lane. Time is both creator and destroyer, equally at home with the shocking or the sublime. The skid marks on our hearts, the exclamation points carved in our eyeballs, these are signs that we have lived and been lived. This is poetry of loss and fury, of awe and celebration, Bowling's voice stunningly rich and rakish.

I write this with the hot ink of the red stripe on the back of a garter...
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In Tim Bowling's poems, memory is much more than a sally down landmark lane. Time is both creator and destroyer, equally at home with the shocking or the sublime. The skid marks on our hearts, the exclamation points carved in our eyeballs, these are signs that we have lived and been lived. This is poetry of loss and fury, of awe and celebration, Bowling's voice stunningly rich and rakish.

I write this with the hot ink
of the red stripe on the back
of a garter snake stopped
a second in the tall grass
beside the Fraser River under a sky of August fire.

I reached into a closet
racked with bones
in a condemned house
I put my arm through
the dark of the dead
to wet this quill
I leaned all my weight
on the dust and air
(nobody there
but this moment, still).

from "Memory"