Sight Lines

Sight Lines by Arthur Sze, 69 pages.

Sze, the first Poet Laureate of New Mexico, won the 2019 National Book Award for this book of poetry.
His poems, to me, are like passing through cool air or cool water. You remember the feeling but not in a way you can really retain.


The Far Norway Maples

Silver poplars rise and thin to the very twig,
but what thins at your fingertips?

The aspirations of a minute, a day, a year?
Yellow tangs veer in the water and, catching

sunlight, veer again, disappear from sight.
The unfolding of a life has junctures

that rupture plot: a child folds paper
and glues toothpicks, designs a split-level

house with white walls and pitched roof,
but his father snatches the maquette

and burns it. If you inhale and spore this moment,
it tumors your body, but if you exhale,

you dissolve midnight and noon; sunlight
tilts and leafs the tips of the far Norway maples.