Poems From the Collection

My Wish, Like the Wish of a Rain Tree

I have seen what sky sees
when by night it silences the grass, and its great intelligence
wanders like a hand through hair, tastes
each emotional strand, each fiber born of love and worn by time-
I sifted my cells, felt their dry weight,
a late-autumn meadow wanting to be reborn.

Afternoon in the Old Country

Today I sat with a man near death
leaning forward in a worn chair
whispering a story of the days
when walnut trees walked upon the earth.
I touched the gnarled knuckles of his fist,
leaned my cheek against those wings sounds
in the hollow of his chest, and rested there,
half expecting the thin limbs to lift, the legs to stand
and tremble forward. But the day remained
as days do here, motionless, save a clock
uttering syllables of time. I slept,
a child hidden in a deep and shifting shade,
lilac-crowned, cool as night or water.

Tidbit for God

Mostly I waited like a pebble on your doorstep
until night grew wan, gave birth
to streets. Then my shoelaces
revealed themselves, dangly as worms,
a metaphor for a life undone, though I tried
to impress you with my great coat
over silver wings as if I could live
among the others, stroll along gentleman-like,
or leave this place, an angel so heavy with regret
she can hardly lift away, but she does,
and light leads her, the fierce light of day-stars,
and she rises (but you know this part)
above the statues, the glass buildings;
all enclosures, even bodies sticky with grime,
seem vacant and clean.

Praise for Body of Crimson Leaves

Everything grows in Body of Crimson Leaves. Everything rises and returns. In her keenly observed reality, even the dead and all the failed things /are rising, turning their faces/to the sun. In these pages one encounters the sweet odor of the self, of it's connectedness and innate spirituality. As one of her titles suggests "We Are Vessels for Love and the Rain." This is a marvelous first collection, a poetry of tenderness, compassion, and transcendence.

Ralph Angel

In this wonderfully sensuous and restorative collection, Celia holds open the gate and invites us to enter her Secret Garden of Beauty and Love where, hidden in the grass and among the flowers, are exquisite imagistic jewels. These are poems of a traveler who moves with ease from the "here" of the conscious to the "there" where dreams originate and where all creatures reside in harmony. If this is Eden, the poet knows its paths and byways by heart-and I am enchanted by her pure, feminine voice.

Judith Minty

Celia has that rare talent-the pure gift of lyric. These poems are full of grace and seem to happen as naturally as the forces of nature, which she writes about with deep perception.

Frances Mayes

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