Not to be overlooked: Poetry is about noticing

In order to move outward, the poet says, we must first move inward: “Uncovering forgotten places inside, I start to complete/ A picture of myself — whole — and I am not so alone/ The parts of me add up to so much more/ Than the sum others think of as my worth/ With this understanding I can return to my work/ I can give of myself without getting broken. …”

Birdwatcher, Orland middle school science teacher, artist: Chicoan J.E. Mathews combines her scientist’s eye for observation with her artist’s heart for feeling in poems about moments, and voices, that are “Often Overlooked” ($12.95 in paperback; self-published).

Mathews’ poetry is about noticing, “from finding a dead duck on a hiking path,” she says in an interview, “or seeing a brown paper bag in the creek to the excruciating feelings of joy and grief I experienced watching my friend living with cancer.”

Many of the poems observe prosaic things until a metaphorical “twist” at the end. “Canning,” for instance, starts with ripe plums and then their preparation. “Rings and lids jangle/ Against boiling glass/ On the back burner/ While plums and pectin/ and sugar simmer/ up front,” the poet writes.

Later, in winter, comes time to savor the results. Delicious at first, but then: “By the seventeenth pint jar/ plums sicken her/ A winter drought/ Another season without/ The living/ Fresh fruit/ Leaves the picker/ Yearning/ For something more/ Than canned blessings/ She cannot swallow/ One more mouthful/ Of this past sweetness.”

A present sweetness comes when the poet sees the “Sandhill Crane,” an experience Mathews draws on from the Llano Seco area: “a hidden beauty suddenly seen/ she soars exquisitely/ above cypress spires/ she points/ and splits the wind.”

In “Being,” the poet is grieving, “sitting with memories/ of her laugh and her smile…// bent beneath the burden/ of longing/ awaiting the return of/ the Sandhill Crane/ yearning to hear his call/ see his dance/ even if only in dreams// … as the tide begins to recede/ shifting waves change direction/ leaving me on the sand/ amid the fractured wreckage/ of so many broken things.”

Things which the poet brings together into something new, not to be overlooked.