Undone by a smell, a word, a place, the photo of a mountain of shoes

I’ve discovered Anne Michaels, 56, an award winning Canadian poet and novelist from Toronto. Her book, Fugitive Pieces, has been added to my wish list after reading these passages:

How one becomes undone by a smell, a word, a place, a photo of a mountain of shoes:

The shadow past is shaped by everything that never happened. Invisible, it melts the present like rain through karst. A biography of longing. It steers us like magnetism, a spirit torque. This is how one becomes undone by a smell, a word, a place, the photo of a mountain of shoes. By love that closes its mouth before calling a name.

An apple screaming its sweet juice:

There was no more simple meal, no thing was less than extraordinary: a fork, a mattress, a clean shirt, a book. Not to mention such things that can make one weep: an orange, meat and vegetables, hot water. There was no ordinariness to return to, no refuge from the blinding potency of things, an apple screaming its sweet juice.

The catastrophe of grace:

But sometimes the world disrobes, slips its dress off a shoulder, stops time for a beat. If we look up at that moment, it’s not due to any ability of ours to pierce the darkness, it’s the world’s brief bestowal. The catastrophe of grace.

Stones and silence:

Some stones are so heavy only silence helps you carry them!

And I have found her poetry. Here from her Poetry collection titled The Winter Vault:

Long after you’ve forgotten someone’s voice,
you can still remember the sound of
their happiness or their sadness.
You can feel it in your body.

Here from her Poetry collection titled Miner’s Pond:

In a world of flux and sometimes frightening instability,
familiarity of recollected kitchen smells and spices,
of family rituals,
of the ordinary world of daily experience,
grants refuge,
a sense of continuity—and contiguity with an intimate community.

Here from her Poetry collection titled The Weight of Oranges with a poem titled: “Rain Makes Its Own Night”:

Rain makes its own night,
long mornings with the lamp left on.
Lean bean grass sticks to the floor near your shoes,
last summer’s pollen rises from damp metal screens.

This is order, this clutter that fills clearings between us,
clothes clinging to chairs,
your shoes in a muddy grip.

The hard rain smells like it comes from the earth.
the human light in our windows,
the orange stillness of rooms seen from outside.
The place we fall to alone,
falling to sleep.
Surrounded by a forest’s green assurance,
the iron gauze of sky and sea,
while night, the rain, pulls itself down through the trees.