“Like apple pucker released / by the cider press. Like wings.” So opens “Vigil,” the first poem of Kathryn Weld’s flickering new collection. These are poems that locate us with great precision, exactly where we live, which is to say, in the constant motion of earthly existence, immersed in the life of the earth, its creatures and tides, and buffeted by our own elation and loss. Here are poems that pause on the cusp of a white-out fog over the inlet; the death of a loved one; the grace note of Spiderwort petals against a garden fern.

NIGHT CROSSING

The fog hurtles like bat wings, 
storms the bow, dodges 

the red-and-green lights 
that signal right-of-way, 

until, finally, the cloud-bodies 
fall away and the boat breaks 

to open water, to wind, 
waves and Cassiopeia leaning 

over the pines. Now night 
spills open and my father 

seems quite near. I hear 
his voice from years ago, 

each crossing, Scan the lake, 
Girl.  Scan the shore, watch out 

for other boats, for shoals. 
Beneath the engine’s endless 

thrum, I hear words like wish, 
awake, here, starry, dead –   

each a discrete eye of fire, 
a single point-estimate.  

Touch water – warm to finger,
too deep to parse or hold.