A weaving together of loss, running and nature.
Poverty Creek Journal by Thomas Gardner
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
In this slim volume of meditations, we listen as Thomas Gardner interweaves his running, nature, and the loss of his brother with reflections on the writings of Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman. and other poets and philosophers. He speaks simply but profoundly, his images of the natural world he encounters on his runs expressed with quiet poetry:
“Bushes and leaves, heavy with frost, bending down to sip, drawing the light, in secret, to their lips.”
His mourning is poignant and not self-pitying:
“Now I’m alone, wordless, with the strangest sens of being set apart to mourn or notice. I’m not sure which. The wind above us, moving across space.”
He quotes Simone Weil: “Attention, taken to its highest degree, is the same thing as prayer.” Gardner’s Poverty Creek Journal shows this to be true on every page.