Toni Thomas

In the Patron Saint's Daybook who we thought we were and what we become may never handshake. The dark holds s ance and storm, the old person on the bus - longing and a shaved room, the bronzed sky - a trilogy of stars climbing.In the Patron Saint's Daybook the forgotten arrive first, the past holds a keepsake of birds, the forest in your palm sleeps safe, as if it was never stolen.

In the auction house of frayed space do some of us stay tethered to a coronation of birds? What would it look like to hold your faith, the earth as a bride?These poems are set in Mexico where the dust mingles with peaches and not every dark road blinds.

In the polar universewhere owls and rabbits and mice hold courtbigaboos paint the walls for sportwhere clocks freeze up and ponies flymy hamster will your shoes untiewhere dogs and wee people like to playfox outrace the claws of dayI will in my spaceship grandtravel you to stars and sandoffer up tea and buttery cakepolar bears, a snow etched laketake you to where strange families livebirds drop gift, the moon holds fizz.

In the mish mush universewhere fizzywicks like to play while queens and bunnies bale the haywhere tadpoles turn the small to big cats and mice hoard tea and fig where strangeness is a lizard fairand to be a princess takes thought and care where goats eat snow and gumpadores liveand what we gain is what we givewhere a child like you and me can supon spongy cake and buttercupfeather poems about the sky help birds to wink and songs to fly come along and seethe vast universe that lives in thee

In the mish mush universewhere fizzywicks like to playwhile queens and bunnies bale the haywhere tadpoles turn the small to bigcats and mice hoard tea and figwhere strangeness is a lizard fairand to be a princess takes thought and care where goats eat snow and gumpadores liveand what we gain is what we givewhere a child like you and me can supon spongy cake and buttercupfeather poems about the skyhelp birds to wink and songs to fly come along and seethe vast universe that lives in theeThis book is a whimsical collection of poems and illustrations to delight children of all ages.

Do some girls find another measure of moonlight, live amid the rain, half-sung roses in the hope someday they can carry them?Why do some of us permanently vanish, others disappear only to come back a rarer kind of filigree?This collection of poetic narratives looks into the lives of many women, what propels them, sustains them, what sometimes goes missing.Perhaps there are trespasses of the heart, precious things we need to learn how to carry.

This collection of poems explores the nature of perishing; how lovers, places, family can disappear before we are even able to claim them. The poems circle longing, faith, the preciousness of connection, what we leave behind, the mysterious forces that gather in us, tempt us to flame.

Are some lives diminutive, do they come to us as a hidden pearl, unnoticed vestibule. Will the woman heavy with longing find a way to meet banishment with a different gaze? This collection of poems explores lives that sometimes move invisible, vanish, or become keepers of their own flame.

What is the key we enter by? How is it that invisible bread sometimes arrives unbidden in the cramped of our soul's kitchen. What does it mean to be tender, a woman, alone, pregnant, uncertain of her place in the world. Is death a fearful proposition, a friend, accomplice? Amid the fields spilling into each other with the weight of her winter, comes this new life growing slow, wanting to believe the promise of summer still sings. The poems in this collection take us on a journey through the stories of various people who must deal with loss, uncertainty, constricted lives, love stretched tight as a clothesline. They go on to follow one woman as she attempts to navigate a lonely pregnancy, keep faith, listen to the earth, help her newborn inhabit a place thick with the language of birds.

What is it that threads through our life amongst the trees' nesting, threads through our family, marriage, hopes, pain? What does it take to be here? How can our children teach us about the future, what it means to trust, forgive, continue even amidst the brokenness?How do we learn how to listen to the earth's language of love and not turn away?There are some of the themes that the poems in this collection grapple with.

In these poems, the night can't always be trusted. Things get carried away, a woman's voice, body. But some of us refuse to parenthesis want forever behind a barbed wire fence, decide to mother the day in a spill of orchids, build a fortress in our children's imagination till even walking on a frozen bridge in a flimsy coat with your soul bleeding can feel like a work of art. To be in this company is contemplate the language of birds. To know that even amidst the plagues, there is a wild and holy spirit that seeks to carry us.