Loose Leaf Notes

My energy has been lower than my normal abnormal low energy.  My work at the local newspaper has slowed to a drip. Because of the pandemic, I can’t go to Dogtown and dance to live music. Floydfest, our town’s renowned music festival, has been cancelled and there aren’t even any July 4^th fireworks to look forward to.

But I have a pool book. My saving grace has been the Great Oaks pool (where we call to reserve a slot and social distance on our lounge chairs), and the fact that I have a pool book that I dip into it after a swim. I’m reading it slowly and savoring its flavor, like the simple garden meals featured in many of the book’s chapters.

Aptly named Organic Matter, I think of it as a shamanistic love story, an intimate self-exploration about finding place and following one’s own intuition. “All I can tell you is that it’s about roadkill,” said my friend B. Chelsea Adams, the author. The back cover entices: “One day Seresa drives by a man dressed in black, hair shining like the glistening pavement, nose almost beak-like. Crows circle his head. She continues on, but his image haunts her…”

Seresa calls him Crow Man and, as the story unfolds, their lives drift and intersect, and are ultimately grounded by the natural world. “It began with lilacs” the book begins … and a childhood home reclaimed. There are secrets buried and revealed through Adams’s poetic descriptions and her attention to detail.

Reading Organic Matter has been like diving into the character’s and the author’s psyche, as they merge through the tastes, scents, sounds and feelings of nature. For me, it has been a summer escape, as I too reacquaint myself with the natural world around me, work in my garden as I shelter in place, and occasionally dip in cool waters, letting myself be buoyantly carried away.

Note: Chelsea is a long-time Scrabble/Poet friend, a past-active participant of our monthly Spoken Word night in Floyd, which ran for 7-years in the early part of 2000, and a featured reader at Floyd’s Little River Poetry Festival. She has a Master of Arts degree from Hollins University’s Creative Writing Program and taught Creative Writing at Radford University. Her poetry chapbook, Looking for a Landing, was published by Sow’s Ear Press in 2000; At Last Light was published by Finishing Line Press in 2013. She also has a chapbook of Java Poems, which she has been known to perform with her husband, who plays guitar as she reads.  We have read poetry together many times, including at libraries , colleges, in gardens and tearooms (click the highlighted links to see). We also were part of a Floyd contingency that won a Scrabble Tournament in Roanoke to benefit Literacy Volunteers. See HERE. You can find Chelsea’s book, Organic Matter on Amazon HERE.