After years of having poetry appear in various journals — including multiple appearances in The Christian Century — Sarah Rossiter has now authored the full-length poetry collection Body of the World, which has just appeared from Cascade Books, and the Poeima Poetry Series. I am honored to have worked with Sarah in bringing this book to the public.
She lives with her husband of over sixty years in Concord, Massachusetts — now a Boston suburb, but once home to such literary figures as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Louisa May Alcott, and Henry David Thoreau.
Rossiter describes herself as a cradle Episcopalian and a spiritual director who’s been meeting with those on the Path for thirty years. She is the mother of four, grandmother of eleven.
The following poem is from Body of the World.
Half-Light
Waking to winter’s dawn,
room drained of color
except for neon numbers–
6:14– blinking on the bruise
of the bureau against a pale wall
while out the window
a world shrouded, everything,
all of it, wrapped in gauze:
like Lazarus, I think, when
Jesus, weeping, called him forth,
and he woke from death, blinded,
his body bound by strips of cloth
that, like a chrysalis dissolving,
fall away as he rises to stumble
through darkness, stunned,
not knowing where he’d been or
what comes next, until he merges
into sudden sun.
Posted with permission of the poet.
Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the author of six poetry collections including Angelicus (2021, Poiema/Cascade), plus three anthologies — available through Wipf & Stock. His new book The Role of the Moon, inspired by the Metaphysical Poets, is now available from Paraclete Press.
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