Terrapin...And Other Poems by Wendell Berry

I have a couple other books I want to write about, but right now I am on a vacation in Tennessee and bought a beautiful little book of poems by Wendell Berry, Terrapin...And Other Poems. I got it at an independent bookstore we discovered in a pamphlet about a nearby town. My husband knows how much I love bookstores -- and he likes them, too -- so we went to that town, Franklin, TN.

I love the illustrations in this book. The illustrator is Tom Pohrt. The pictures are realistic but somehow dreamlike, and they literally depict whatever the poem on the preceding or next page is about. You could look at it and think it was a children's book, and I suppose it could be. It's a book of beautiful poems with lovely pictures that illustrate them.

I recently read some words by Nicole Gulotta, who wrote another book I want to tell you about here, Eat This Poem. She said, "food and poetry are calls to linger, appreciate small details, and meditate on the richness of our days." Today, as I picked up this book of poems I thought of that and how good it was that being on vacation offered me the freedom to stop and linger. I took the book outside on my sister-in-law's porch, sat in the porch swing, and read the poems aloud to myself. Several of them made me laugh out loud. All of them were touching. They gladdened my heart, as the Psalmist might say.

Here is one that made me laugh. Take a couple moments to linger and notice the small details.

A Squirrel 

Here's a fellow who leaves his hole
On Sunday to loaf and invite his soul.
He looks into a hollow beech tree
To see what he can or can't see.
The day is bright. He's in no haste,
Although there was one time at least
He should have hurried more than he did.
He should have run to his hole and hid;
Some hairs were missing from his tail
Where a hawk just barely missed a meal.
This squirrel just barely kept ahead
Of what he'd be if he was dead.
He's the proven perfect master
Of his last meeting with disaster,
And now he has that bare pretext
Not to worry about the next.

I especially love the lines

This squirrel just barely kept ahead
Of what he'd be if he was dead.
He's the proven perfect master
Of his last meeting with disaster

I was smiling before these lines, and laughed when I got to them. That word "dead" was so unexpected: "of what he'd be if he was..........dead." I suppose you could get all deep and say how that's true of all of us, just barely ahead of what we'd be if we were dead, but it still just makes me laugh. And master of disaster. That reminded me of when once my dad came in from outside soaking wet, and as he took off his raincoat and hat I said, "Oh, it's raining outside." "Master of the obvious," he said to me. 

There are many other beautiful poems and illustrations. I highly recommend this book.