A Patient Desire

This first gathering of lyrical works from poet Tim Nonn's journey into his oncoming blindness is sometimes beautiful, other times astonishingly wise. When he says 'going blind/is another way/of seeing/the heart clearly, ' he accepts the dare of kinship with Rumi and Basho, Roethke and Bly, a lineage of mystics and, perhaps ironically, seers. His unrhymed quatrains, deceptively simple, are fully armed with axioms: 'knowing is impossible/you must feel your way/into your heart/and get lost.' And his mastery of simple means as an approach to the ineffable is always in effect, as when 'in the presence/of a tree/stillness/is a conversation' or 'an evening song/of a bird facing darkness/had the lonely clarity/of one in love with light.' One in love with the light indeed. Here Tim Nonn welcomes you and it is likely you will find yourself happily entranced