What We’re Reading: Quiver

Quiver by Sarah Busse (Red Dragonfly Press 2009)

This week has been unseasonably warm in Minneapolis. Don’t get me wrong, I love all the sunshine I can get. But as a true Minnesotan, temperatures above 80 tend to make me sweat, which in turn tends to make me cranky. I’m a sucker for those sunny days with a slight chill to make me grab my down vest. This week I felt fall needed a reminder, a gentle kick in the pants, if you will, to get back on track. Quiver, a letterpress chapbook by Sarah Busse, contains just that gentle kick in the poem “Flicker.” (Now get back here, fall.)

This morning a flock of flickers—flash of red,
flash of yellow at my feet—rose and flew
past the blue turkey-foot, the prairie dropseed.
The grasses nodded their purple heads, bronzed,
lazy in their affirmations . . . until the wind blew.

How fast the wheel turns, love, in the corn-colored
light of September. The feathered heart stirs,
seeing how the sumac flares, how the honey locust
shivers down its gold and gilds my driveway—
a school of minnows diving, or, if the eye blurs,

the shimmy of a yellow dress to the floor
and where are you to be found—in the slow pour
of strong coffee, the smoky stars that reel invisible
over the city? My children toss leaves up to see them
leap and fall and leap again, laugh and beg for more.

The chapbook has eleven poems total, and it’s a wonderful, short journey through seasons filled with children, birds, and movement. The other poems follow along in the same quiet observational beauty as “Flicker.” My only complaint is in Busse’s occasional odd phrasing, which catches the reader off guard by leaving out a preposition or blending different subjects and their verbs. There are moments where this works, but others trip up the momentum.

Busse has the talent of the sucker-punch ending that I so covet. All her poems are tied up neatly with insightful observations or quiet, all-knowing moments, yet she never becomes preachy or too clean, holding on to that delicate balance. So many lovely images fill this small collection, and they leave me wanting more.

Are you a lover of fall too? What poems capture the season for you?