A poetic vision quest and pilgrimage into the numinous presence of the Cypress Hills.

Cypress is a series of linked meditative poems focusing on the Cypress Hills of southwestern Saskatchewan, a remarkable landform that Barbara Klar has come to know intimately. Moving with grace between the perceptual moment and its visionary dimension, Klar opens numinous avenues of reconnection to place.

Wind is Pine for listen.
Snap means wait.
And the shadow word
dangles from the witch’s hair
and fights the old war of deadfall and pours
from the one-toothed gargoyles in the eaves of the forest,

in the gardens of the giants, their woody flowers creaking,
the word leaning west, west, growing vertical
against the wind’s disorder, the raven trees planted
by one wingtip and flying.
— from “Not Speaking for One Week”

Intensely moving, courageous in their utter dedication, eager for the roots of being, the poems in Cypress carry us to a unique landscape that is also a place of transformation.