Ordinary Light

Cynthia Sharp's collection begins with an invitation to accompany her on a journey of healing, even as we grapple with the very real threat of global ecological collapse. She explores with clear-eyed honesty the way we inherit from former generations both our strengths and the environmental degradation that threatens our very existence. Although there is real urgency in the present moment, Sharp's poems don't lead the reader into a mindset of panic and fear. Rather, she reflects on the lessons of the pandemic, how "we're all ordinary these days" and have been given an opportunity to slow down and witness the marvelous connections in creation and previously unimagined possibilities for healing ourselves and nature. In this simpler monk-like existence we can learn to breathe again, as do the lines of her poems. Sharp's attention to color, how she carefully notes hues and variations of shades and light, becomes a meditation in itself. Peach and pear are colors of morning in this "mysticism of color". Her poems often begin with a sense of domestic intimacy as in beginning the day by donning a "coral Italian silk blouse" with "pink petals" in her hair, a fitting garb for opening to "starlight/in royal blue skies", an expanding universe, and awareness of the sacredness of an individual life. There is a strong sense of feminine energy in these poems, and Sharp describes her relationship with her grandmother as a "communion of being". Right to the last poem there is the possibility of going through a "dreamtime" portal, acknowledging our own ephemeral condition with its aches and pains (both physical and existential) and being present to a higher frequency.