Nutley Pond

by Lyn Lifshin

92 pages, S12.95 paperback, $39.95 hard cover.

Voted among the best books of poetry for Winter 2008 reading by The Monserrat Review Poetry editor, Grace Cavalieri. Click here

Sample Poems
Reviews and information

Sample Poems

TEMPERATURES FALLING

Moon slivers on the
rolling skin of water.
Geese in half light,
armada of feathers.
Wind blows them closer.
One silver band glows.
Their onyx, black flame
in a night fire

IN THE ONE SPACE THAT WASN'T FROZEN

the heron, deep
in pond water,
still as sticks

and then, a sudden
swoop like the
last fruit falling

off a tree into snow.
I happened to see it,
standing near the

window, that flash
of tangerine and
gold in its beak like

a barb of sun, a slice
of guava in colorless
air. It's been so long

I don't remember
something I looked for
and wanted to come

came so fast

HERON ON ICE

Pale salmon light,
9 degrees. Floor
tiles icy. Past
branches the
beaver's gnawed

at the small hole
the heron waits,
deep in the water.
Sky goes apricot,
tangerine, rose.

Suddenly, a dive,
then the heron
with sun squirming
in his mouth, a
carp that looks a

third as big as he
is gulped, then
swallowed, orange
glittering wildly
like a flag or the

wave of someone
drowning

GEESE ON ICE

frozen, perched as
if listening for some
distant code,
news of a warm

front coming in
time. Meanwhile,
alerts go out on
local stations,

schools close
early. The "partly
sunny" never came.
30 percent chance

of snow. Trees tilt
east, the ground
hardens. Geese
take root as scarves

float in wind like
strange new flags

BEFORE ANY SNOW

you can taste it.
Before trees
glitter, a heavy
dampness after
Indian Summer.
Air's a wet
blanket. Two
sweat shirt's
aren't enough.
The gulls seem
oblivious, flap up
from across the
pond where I shiver
thru soggy grass,
descend, fifty
parachutes of feathers
skidding on pewter
glass

TRYING TO JUST SMELL THE TANGERINE TREE'S BLOSSOMS

the light going,
muskrats slither
toward damp stones

gold ripples
under the pond's
pewter days from

the day of the
shortest light.
Small animals

under tawny dead
reeds and lilies

as black closes in

WALKING PAST THE POND AT NIGHT

December,
record
breaking
warm. Geese
in clumps,
opalescent
under this
copper moon.
Mist, a
blue heron.
darkness wraps
my hair like
a scar
of stars

DECEMBER POND

The v of mallards
criss-crosses the
beaver's wake.
Feathers clot on
apricot water.
Dried camellias
flutter like the
feathers. What
isn't, haunts like
the name "Bethany"
of the stain on
a quilt that some
how sucks me back
to before my mother
was howling in the
smallest dark room
under a moon
of brass

THIS DECEMBER

it's almost 70
after dark.
I stop by the pond
instead of
shivering back.
Shapes in clumps
like tumbleweeds
of feathers
floating on
some prairie,
the moon in haze
dazzling as
pale teeth of cats.
Silver light, a
blaze of willow.
Lights from the
metro, rhinestones
thru trees,
branches of stars

BEFORE THE BEAVER SLITS

pewter's silk
this warm spell
with dandelions
in bloom, a coppery
glow thru dark
cotton, I walk
thru bleached grass,
light rose as cats'
feet, before a
buttery lemon sun
or crows wild as
hands on fire,
black ducks float
on silk and stars

THURSDAY, WALKING PAST THE POND NEAR MIDNIGHT,

willow roots, grass clumped
with feathers. No geese until
you look long enough to

see them floating like pale
cotton batten or spun sugar.
Hickory nuts on creosote.

Without leaves, lights from
the metro blaze, yellow
diamonds bathing the hill

THE POND ON THE WALK BACK FROM THE METRO, DECEMBER, A NIGHT YOU CAN SMELL THE MELT

without leaves,
lights thru silver
branches hang
icicle stars.
Jade and ruby
lights. I think of
Liv Ullman saying
"life is what goes
on in other people's
rooms." Squishy
earth, barberry.
New dandelions.
Birds in clumps.
Feathers on the
silk of the pond
like ghosts about to
take the shape of
whatever you
make of them

GEESE FLOATING

after the December
night it stays in
the 60's, the pond
a plate of grey,
jade and ruby,
flashing lights
on grey brocade.
After it's too
warm for a parka
the geese float like
tumbleweeds of
feathers drifting
thru reeds

EARLY, 20 DEGREES, JANUARY

wood's almost white
before water goes
rose. What's left
of night pools in
coves. Black ripples.
Indigo outlines. A
slate V. Ice tipped
feathers. Dark flickers
as melon spreads,
breath, a caption
anything, still could
be written on

SLATE INDIGO, THE COLDEST JANUARY MORNING

iced grass
goose droppings
go stone in.
Pewter tinged ice.
Guava streaks.
Rain water's crystal.
A blue shoe,
glazed. Light
slicks over the pond,
past paper stuffed
into the hole under
the porch shredded
this morning to a nest
for something that
moves in close
thru the dark

Reviews and information

From winter fields smoldering with light and temperatures falling though spring with geese honking the light back and summer's wind of white rose petals, Lyn Lifshin's images, her snapshots and freeze frames, pull you into fall's ruby oaks and the coming blue sack of cold. She chronicles life at the pond, layer by layer, the inner and outer landscapes of this almost hidden refuge where deer and beaver, fox, herons, gulls, geese, mallards and even one of the geese featured in Fly Away Home and Father Goose landed for a few days. Nutley Pond is the only place this one goose appeared again in US after being trained with other motherless geese to follow an ultra lite plane to learn to migrate. Like so much at the pond, this goose, with her silver band and tame approach, was breath taking.

The poems from Nutley Pond will pull you into the last flaming maples and glistening gold fish into the shallows and shadows where stars swim in blue black ripples. You will be wrapped in garnet and turquoise sun rises, goose music and the rustling willows on the walk close to the pond. Experience the beauty and terror as light and dark braid and the birds rustle through leaves while the sound of water is a dark whisper though wet stones and crickets get louder and louder and then, stillness.

AS IF A FEATHER
quilt exploded,
a white you can't
see in the dark
but breathe, a
wind of white
rose petals,
a wave of fog
in the shape of
flying things.
Like radio
voices on
the pillow,
lulling, keeping
what's ragged
and tears at
bay, the geese
pull sky and stars
in thru glass,
are like arms,
coming back
as sound

Copyright © 2008 by Lyn Lifshin

Published by:

Goose River Press
3400 Friendship Rd.
Waldoboro, ME 04572-6337

Telephone/Fax: 207-832-1168
email: gooseriverpress@roadrunner.com

WEB: www.gooseriverpress.com

Her intense poems reflect a range of emotions and subjects and touch readers because they suddenly realize that feelings they previously thought to be theirs alone were shared. Winner of many awards including a Bread Loaf Fellowship, The Jack Kerouac Award and New York State Caps Grant, she gives readings, talks and workshops, often based on the books she has edited or exhibits in museums, around the country and she has been poet in residence at many colleges, libraries and centers.

To order from Goose River Press

Nutley Pond, Paperback, ISBN # 978-1-59713-068-4

$12.95 + shipping and insurance**

Nutley Pond, Limited Edition Hard Cover, ISBN # 978-1-59713-069-4

$39.95 + shipping and insurance**

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Review by Hugh Fox

A very interesting development in Lifshin's whole aesthetic approach here. Very Greinke-like, she almost sounds like a poetry-centered Buddhistic specialist in the naturalistic sciences, capturing all the nuances and details in the away-from-all-cities world of Nutley Pond. Read the whole review.

Review by Laura Boss, poet and editor of Lips Magazine

If Monet had read Lyn Lifshin's Nutley Pond, he would have painted it. Lifshin's lush images of Nutley Pond in all its seasons with its kaleidoscope of images as " geese float like ghost ships" and "gold fish glow llike opals"-- where Lifshin herself observes the flow of fauna and creatures, including the rare discovery of one of the "motherless geese" from "Operation Migration." And although this book of poems is a different flight from other books of poems by Lifshin, she proves she is as passionate about our natural world as she is about relationships. Nutley Pond is a book that needs to be in every school library from middle school to graduate school if it prides itself on having the best work on our natural environment as well as the best poetry written.