10 Moons And 13 Horses: Poems by Gary Short (University of Nevada Press)$14.00, 63pgs.

Tonight my hands trace
my body’s imperfect history.
The scars, not seen but felt,
like pain remembered.
I grew up in a house of shadows:
I knew ghosts.
If this life is quick light
between two long darknesses,

then I am lonely and feel
the huge shadow of a cloud
crossing the moon . . .

-- from "Imperfect History"

Gary Short has long been one of my favorite contemporary poets. In this, his third full-length collection, he once again strikes gold.

Like his previous efforts, he deals with loneliness and loss and the Southwestern landscape. Although, I'm not sure I enjoyed this volume quite as much as Flying Over Sonny Liston, I do think this is a more personal volume.

Darkness is a strong motif in this work, yet he is not "talking about the night, but the second night, the dark within the dark." Short's landscape is a place where we live "under the high hunger of hawks." That is not a happy place. However, his reality is also a place where we are "slowly making a way toward the beloved", where reconciliation is possible. Ultimately, that is main truth of this book -- not that we love with the possibility of loss, often in the vacuum of isolation, but that we struggle toward survival and spiritual renewal despite all odds against us.

-- Reviewed by JCE