These poems stem from close observation and make the dangerous beauty of both predator and prey come alive. In “Saying Grace,” Yake closely observes how an eagle “squared her wings / to tread on rain” while eyeing fish prey in the water below. A particularly lovely poem, “Praising the Fish,” honors rainbow trout, ending with the lines, “you are a towering splash of hunger, // our flourishing, transient shout.” Nearby poems often speak to one another. Reverent and Irreverent Prayers takes us into biology, fungi, Haida tribal dances, racist atrocities, taxidermy, ravens, and wolves. “Son Out of a Long Absence” offers one of Yake’s commentaries about time: “I hooked my fist into the belly of each year.” Other pieces tell of family and colleagues as well as of a father who ages following a stroke. Yake presents poems full of place, nature, and people in narrative free verse with Cohorts. The poem “inside out” claims “trees are our lungs turned inside out.” “Aphorisms” offers intellectual observations, such as “Poetry: salvation from the mundane.” Regarding science, “All is honored, nothing worshiped.” Flecks, Hints, and Intuitions contains short poems, aphorisms, and haiku. The second poem, “Tending Trail,” explores the “phrenology / of the land.” We are “curious and wanderers” and in our efforts to repair trails for future generations, we will be “leaving branch handles / intact to grasp.” This allusion to repair and future generations foreshadows ecopoetic concerns that are addressed throughout the book.Īfter Yake’s first two introductory poems, the collection is divided into nine sections that mix time and travels. “We work our worn way along shorelines.” Creatures emerge from the “flat dark” where “Voles, pack rats, / and wolves in concert-all leave their prints / in the pale dust.” The first poem, “Waymaking by Moonlight,” traverses the physical world. Yake begins with two front-piece poems that set the tone of his collection. In Yake’s seventh book, Waymaking by Moonlight: New and Selected Poems, his free verse maps a journey to contemplate and honor the natural world and the people he has known along the way. Bill Yake has spent years immersed in nature as a poet, traveler, essayist, photographer, and environmental scientist.
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