QUATREFOIL by CB FOLLETT

EILEEN TABIOS Engages

QUATREFOIL by CB Follett

(Many Voices Press, Kalispell, Montana, 2016)

To think about poems on trees is to think of Joyce Kilmer and her poem “Trees.” I note this as “Tree Music” is my favorite section in CB Follett’s new and charming poetry collection, QUATREFOIL. The other three sections—“Congregation,” “Island Made of Bones” and “Poems for Red Canyons”—feature poems as adept as those in “Tree Music” but I admit my bias upon opening this book: “What is a Tree Poem After Joyce Kilmer’s?”

Follett answers the question well. Her answer would lack integrity, for one, if her tree poems didn’t acknowledge environmental degradation. For example, from “At the Top”—

To the tops of trees,

I would climb …

And above, where I sat,

in the vastness without compromise,

the heady ozone was not yet in danger

of flying loose to other systems.

In general, Follett’s poems make for pleasurable reading as they contain humor and charm—e.g. from “Lobbing Chestnuts,”

Good shot—hard ding, the driver’s foot

off the accelerator, her thoughts rising like smoke,

Where did that come from? the car’s stutter

of indecision, the unseen shrug and moving off.

Sometimes, even at that distance, I could

Put another on the roof, fifty feet away. It had

to come from above, because sometimes the car

would stop dead, the door swing open, someone would get out and look.

I could feel them looking,

though my tree had a trunk thicker than I was,

and my sweater was navy

and my pants too.

—evocative reverse nostalgia—e.g.

Where Air Grows Thin

small girl

in red overalls

                                    high

in a chestnut tree

listening to bird song

and intimate

                                    with bark

look up through branches

to the lacework

                                    of sky

see if

in the great void

where air

                                    grows thin

the woman

of your future

                                    remembers you.

—and, importantly, empathy—e.g.

            Warning

Hazardous Tree Area

            Sign in the Presidio of San Francisco

Hundred-year-old spruce trees

lean. Their roots spread to hold

are slipping free, the ground

too saturated

with a season of downpour.

I know how they feel,

how wind has more endurance

and sweeps off the ocean

with its overwhelming breath,

and sometimes you just can’t hold.

Overall, the poems manifest the poet’s believably autobiographical stance in the first line of the book’s opening poem, “The Loving of Trees”—

I am in love with trees

Indeed. Fullstop. But let me nod to the book’s other sections by sharing from a different section a poem that may be my favorite in the book because I love dogs and the impact of the poem’s powerful last line is unforgettable:

Island of Lost Bones

Dog abandoned

on an island made of bones

and each gnaw of hunger

reduces his real estate.

All too soon, he must nose

under water to drag out succulence.

In time, he stands on tiptoe,

forepaws a’paddle: last bone

tight in his teeth. Desperate

moment, and then, She

pushes a boat in from stage right.

I thank CB Follett for this very substantial poetry collection.

*****

Eileen Tabios does not let her books be reviewed by Galatea Resurrects because she's its editor (the exception would be books that focus on other poets as well).  She is pleased, though, to point you elsewhere to recent reviews of her work: THE CONNOISSEUR OF ALLEYS was reviewed by Marthe Reed for The Volta Blog and Grady Harp for Amazon;  INVENT(ST)ORY was reviewed by  Neil Leadbeater in The Halo-Halo Review Mangozine #2; Reproductions of the Empty Flagpole was reviewed by Monica Manolachi in The Halo-Halo Review Mangozine #2; Footnotes to Algebra was reviewed by Chris Mansel in The Halo-Halo Review Mangozine #2; and SILK EGG was reviewed by Aileen Ibardaloza in Goodreads.