Company in the Still Dark

Isolated in her home during the COVID-19 pandemic, "in the still dark," poet M. L. Triplett discovers (or rediscovers) there are multitudes inhabiting her solitude: a multitude of voices (her own and those of others), a multitude of memories (especially those of family), and a multitude of questions about her past, present, and future. There is also the multitude of hopes and fears that come with an awareness of what she calls "the autumn season" of her life. And there are, as well, the multitude of allies, totems, and spirit guides which appear and communicate with her in the natural world. Her solitude is crystal-like; it both illumines and is illumined. But "no color, shape, transparency or power alone can define [it]:' In Triplett's poems there are her "epiphanies and history shared with the transplanted crinum flourishing outside the fence." Triplett is inspired by "the seasons and continuing transformation of all existence in the Universe"; they are what her poems are about. These seasons are those of nature, of course, but also the "seasons" of Ecclesiastes, which are the diffraction of Time in our lives. We who are Triplett's readers, we, too are with her" in the still dark." In the company of her poems we may learn to see better in this dark. Triplett's poems are full of new eyes for readers with which to see these seasons and their ceaseless transformations.