Walpack and Such--Poetry: New and Selected: by Kerri Nicole McCaffrey

Join Kerri Nicole McCaffrey on a deeply spiritual poetic flight over a long forgotten land--and in your gliding be transported by the sound of steep waterfalls and a balsam breeze. While there, why not go to a beautiful place in yourself that perhaps, like the town of Walpack, has been too long forgotten? The title of the book refers to both Walpack Township-and Walpack Center, New Jersey. This bucolic spot was slated to be flooded by the Federal Government's Tocks Island Dam Project-an idea which flourished from the 1960's through the early 1970's. The project would have inundated parts of Northwest New Jersey and Northeast Pennsylvania via the damming of the Delaware River. The government promised that the reservoir and dam would provide flood protection downstream, clean drinking water, and a recreation area. Residents, people who loved the area, and environmentalists all fought back hard and eventually stopped the project from coming to fruition. By that time, however, the Federal Government had made the majority of area residents move, buying their homes in an "eminent domain" style. The Walpack was essentially abandoned. As if it had been the Rapture, barn doors stood rolled open, personal effects blew in the wind, and an eerie but peaceful trance enveloped the area. You can hike there today-as Kerri Nicole McCaffrey has done since her childhood. These poems are Kerri Nicole's testament to the Walpack, a place effuse with natural beauty: waterfalls, cliffs, and pine stands. The haunting parts however, the pieces that possess a poet's soul, are the abandoned structures-like unfinished words spoken by the dying-we can only speculate as to what their former inhabitants might have said. Kerri Nicole sees this volume of poems as her guess. Noted Dodge Poet BJ Ward has compared Kerri Nicole McCaffrey to Thoreau and Mary Oliver--high praise indeed. Her poetry is both conversational and songful. You will want to buy all of her books after reading just this one. Follow Kerri on her Amazon Author page and at her poetry blog: www.thepoetseyes.com. A Poem of Introduction to This Collection "In This Valley" -Concerning the last day in Walpack, New Jersey- In this valley, With its smattering of blossoms Mountain laurel, apple, pear- We walk in golden grass To the stately oak Which was a part Of both then and now And sitting in its generous arms Wonder What happened to the farm Where's the teacher The mailman Where has everyone gone? To which there are various answers- A scattering of clues: Abandoned homes, pink wallpaper peeling- A glass bottle of laundry bluing- But from behind the veil of closed eyes All the information we need- On that last day, A farmer got off his plow And shed a tear at this tree The schoolmaster knew it was perhaps the last bell And rang it pensively, As the mailman shut the boxes Slowly. All saw the farmer, standing by the oak One hand on its bark, As if leaning on a friend- A sight, somehow, holy.