Thelma Palmer

High White Moon

Poems From Three Islands: Guemes, Fidalgo, and Honshu

Jonah’s Near Death Experience

His boat smashed in the storm,

Jonah managed alone till dark

in the raging sea.

Sputtered and flailed,

called God,

cursed God,

wanted to give up but could not.

When the whale came at last

and opened his monstrous maw,

Jonah swam in willingly,

latched onto an ivory tooth

and spent the night curled

on the soft pink tongue

in the blow and draw of stinking air.

Next morning, the mammoth

spat him onto the beach,

and Jonah, hugging himself,

rolled in the sand

and laughed and laughed.

Who could have guessed

God was a whale with bad breath.

Jack Island, December

First snow across the bay,

and we two lean together

at the window

watching islands whiten,

lull. Our whispered words

are scraps that catch awhile

around the sill and then escape

through glass to blow away

in snow until, at last,

we speak no more

but enter touch entirely

and mingle

like the witching light

of islands blending,

into snow and sea.

Praise for High White Moon

Thelma Palmer's new volume of poems should confirm
her as one of the essential poets of the Pacific Northwest.
This is a book remarkable for its scale: from delight in the oddities and ironies of life to an embrace of the somber and poignant and what is truly precious.

Palmer is as fearless as Sharon Olds in facing and redeeming what is most painful. And like Mary Oliver, she is humble before the epiphanies Nature can provide. She practices the prayer of attention, recognizing the details that build the evocative myth of her own life: “doves pull out their feathers in my dreams.”

Her poems range from two islands in the San Juan archipelago to the great island country of Japan, where “old women learn of heaven through bowing to the earth.”
Thelma Palmer's poetry bows to the earth in lyricism that is arresting in its beauty. This is literature that offers both pleasure and wisdom—poetry lovers take note!

—James Bertolino
Award-winning author of First Credo and Snail River