Proof of Passage

Peter Stillman

Proof of Passage

A bear came by the door last night.
I found its scat, still warm and gorged
with berry pulp.

I could say its heated exhalations
fogged the window—that I heard
the rake of claws.

I could tell you anything about
these early hours—that while you slept
I watched two stallions rear and spar,

that geese were up and talking over
Winthrop’s Ridge, or through
a livid mist how mountains look
like folded, gray-gloved hands.

A bear came north across our yard,
its gut a swag of blackberries,
some immature, still passionately red.

poetry
ISBN 1-59661-083-2
34 pages/$9

I love these poems. It’s as simple as that. Here are a mature poet’s lyrical impressions of a world he clearly cherishes—a world where “mountains look like folded, gray-gloved hands,” where “love… works up through thawing earth like stones.” Peter Stillman’s poems are truly gifts, resounding with that love.
—Fran Claggett

Peter Stillman’s poems love everything: his wife, the land, the animals and birds, old barns, whatever grows, and whatever and whoever has died. His touch is tender and makes everything he touches, in Joseph Campbell’s words, “transparent to transcendence.” They are also incredibly sensual. Smells of hay, wild flowers, winter nights, and, yes, even dung suffuse them. I could compare him with the other poets of the rural life—Frost, Berry, Oliver—but that might suggest his poems are derivative in some way. They are not. His voice is clear, strong, and unique. These are poems to keep by your bedside to read, read, and reread.
—William Greenway

Peter Stillman has authored a dozen books, most recently Planting by the Moon and the award-winning Families Writing. He is a widely published poet and essayist and has conducted numerous seminars and lectures on writing across the U.S. He and his wife, Marcia, live in a rural hamlet in the Northern Catskills of New York.