Tim Bellows
~ ABOUT SUNLIGHT FROM ANOTHER DAY ~
“These are not just poems, they are portals. I wanted to keep reading to be in Tim's illuminated world, awaiting each wink and click and swirl of insight and, yes, love.”
~ Susan Wooldridge, author of poemcrazy: freeing your life with words; also, appearing soon, Foolsgold: Making Something from Nothing – and Finding a Creative Practice.
~ ~ ~
“These poems will excite you to listen once again.”
~ Shaun T. Griffin, Editor, Desert Wood, an Anthology of Nevada Poets.
~ ~ ~
In unique rhythms and fresh imagery, Tim Bellows’ Sunlight from Another Day calls to mind Thoreau’s notion of the “tonic of wildness” and wild lands. The book touches on the hazardous but often healing wilderness of love relationships. Some poems echo an unsettlingly familiar sense of the bizarre; others evoke purifying streams of empathy and compassion. As an integrated whole, they affirm the value of our daily song, the value of listening, in our more enlightened moments, to “the droning of silence” (Martin Buber). We come to perceive that all things are endowed with sound:
the tires roar
choir sounds built in surely God
is kissing my ear glimmer
of woodwinds breezes through me
Sunlight also seeks out the primary harmonies within all defining relationships: in nature, in the inexpressible divine, in human creations, and in the internal tensions generating life within crafted artistic works. (Bellows applauds Mozart’s astonishing Ave Verum Corpus, Roethke’s “Four for Sir John Davies,” and Whitman’s “Song of Myself.”)
The poems relish the holy music of herring gulls and all flying creatures. Their repertoire of raucous or harmonizing calls. Finally, the author pays close attention to the liberating contrasts in works like the Ninth Symphony – even the Sergeant Pepper’s album. He observes the movements of an especially fascinating cat:
his shoulderblades
gyrate with mild spells,
composure worth the price
of any dried-up mona lisa.
if I would only
follow him, we’d
hum all around
the ceilings of this
house alone –
many small suns.
many golden eyes.
Tim Bellows was born in a small town in New Jersey in 1945. In recent decades, he’s found himself as poet, teacher, and writer. Having done some hiking in Switzerland, he’s awestruck by open country – also by contemplative travel and poetry’s images that “speak singingly.”
A graduate of the school of self-created hard knocks, various blues/rock 'n' roll bands, and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Tim has taught for over eighteen years at colleges like Sierra and the University of Nevada-Reno.
His poems appear in A Racing Up the Sky, poetry sequences on the force of love and the wild (Kerby Smith, photographs & book production: Eclectic Press). Also see Desert Wood, an Anthology of Nevada Poets (University of Nevada Press, 1991), Wild Stars (Starry Puddle Press, 1997), and Angel Cats, Divine Messengers of Comfort (New World Library, 2004). After earning two nominations for the Annual Pushcart Prize, Tim has gone on to publish widely in literary journals and on the Web.
Along with college teaching, he continues to string words together and publish around the country. His poems appear in two issues of Midwest Quarterly, three issues of Modern Haiku, and other periodicals such as Interim, Embers, Wisconsin Review, Damaged Wine, The Small Pond Magazine, Portlandia Review, South Coast Poetry Journal, Phoebe, CQ, and Potomac Review.
*** As founder and editor, he offers a free e-newsletter (Lightship News) with tips on revising both our spiritual consciousness and our creative work. (To get in touch, visit sky999.blogspot.com.)
WE COME IN, DOORS SLAM
Little sticks of us, laughing, screeching.
Snowy wetness melts into our clothes.
There's company so they run us up
to a squeaky tub. They're
so quick about it,
our toes and noses
still feel freezy; they rub us dry
so fast we stagger. Here's a tuck in
and prayers – now our beds
fill with warmth and breathing.
So much talk – loudness we can't make out –
swirls up from the first floor. Relatives
roar and clink glasses and silver.
Candles
swim in their wine. What's in
wine? What's in their fun, their eating, hugging,
knocking a chair over? We grip
dark green blankets around us and feel
sounds through wood and pipes and plaster.
We can't sleep.
But we turn over and everything rolls
into daylight – we spin
down a hill of sun-filled snow.
