What Shines

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Retrospective of a long life and already inimitable career in poetry, Sydney Lea's What Shines asserts and asks in equal measure. In older age, Lea affirms the luster of fruit long labored for: a resilient and happy marriage, the rewards of parenthood and, later, grandchildren, a profound intimacy with northern New England -- the environment, the seasons, the people, home, time. But he also transmits the escalating urgency of answering the fundamental question: at this late hour, what light do we have to see by? What light will outlast us? In "1949, " Lea revisits old photographs: one of his parents "both grinning straight at the Kodak, / an elm, not yet blighted to death, at their backs, " another of his mother standing beside a bucket of sunfish. "With what I've known, you'd think there'd be chapter on chapter, " he says, everything habitual, familiar. Still he stumbles upon revelation, the visceral novelty of experience, and Lea's brilliant shock glimmers in the golden hour. "I shouldn't be, " he disclaims, "and yet somehow I'm stunned: / Even the fish in that yellowed photo are young." Despite the accelerating onset of autumn, consolations line the path "at the edge / of our late-shorn meadow, " where there lie blackberries that "should have vanished by now." And so what if a handful will not disarm winter? "Though tiny and poor, it's sweet, / the fruit, even more so / than when I found more." If we receive this allotment of days once and only once, Lea's consummate collection urges us to remember the spirit of the lyric itself: although we couldn't keep it all forever, when we had it, my God, so much of it was sweet.