River by the Glass

River by the Glass is a collection of poems spanning two decades. The poems, says the photographer in River by the Glass, Ron Pickup, contain a whimsical wit and metaphysical humor. With biting humor and haunting verse, the poems reflect visual puzzles and conundrums of life, thus the viewing of the River, by Glass, through lenses - windows, screens, mirrors, and drinking vessels.

The poet recalls a time in her childhood when her barefoot ways met the barbarism in the human defacement of nature. She witnessed broken beer bottles with ugly shards of brown glass marring the lovely boulders, sand, and water purity of her favorite river haunt, the Kern River. She could never understand how people could deface the lovely places in our lives, the only kind of refuge from the asphalt and concrete desecration that levels our aspirations and deadens our nerves and senses.

Yet, in a strange kaleidoscopic way, those shards of glass that derived from sand and water, seemed to glitter and demand meaning for being what they were-products. They existed and they were there, clashing with the ideal of what she envisioned.

This collection is the poet's way of cleansing some of the impure places in the human heart and exploring the mysteries in human behavior and the natural world.

The poems give a glimpse into the quirks of humanity. Subjects include the leaving of loved ones and the world of dementia ~ the meeting with a deer that connects the aspects of wild and tame ~ and other topics such as parthenogenesis, gold panning, gardening, skipping stones, finding a harmonica in the river sand ~ making coffee in the morning ~ the dying of friends ~ the haunting by a black dog when even holy water couldn't protect enough ~ contemplating the breaking of a bull pine limb while a couple sleeps ~ the celebration of a woman's cycle of birthing coming to an end with the flow of the "Tuolumne River" ~ and poems that whimsically explore love through visions and images of the particular, spilling into the universal.

Take a sip of River by the Glass and quench your thirst. You may find yourself drinking harder than you thought.