Terrapin Books (2021) - paperback, 110 pages
Years Beyond the River
In the exquisite naturally charged poems of David Axelrod’s ninth collection, Years Beyond the River, an encounter with thorn or wildflower is new life, the rotted heartwood of fir becomes memory, and the delicate brush of a bat wing upon the skin echoes the beloved walking through the dark. Fire-haunted and fire-hunted we exist in a oneness with all things beckoning both death and life. What we know of the soul crosses the span of “Orion's spiral arm” and remembers what it means to be wilderness. There is abundance and loss among the terrible singular notion of rivers and trees passing away. There is beauty, grace, and strength interwoven with the scent of sage in our clothes as we breathe and dream and love.
— Shann Ray
“David Axelrod writes achingly beautiful poems on the growing shadow of climate collapse. His lamentations address our refusal to turn away from the insatiable desire for consumption and material wealth, asking, “Aren’t we the fire front, gnawing through dry scrub?” Yet this collection, as it brings us into the intimacy of earth’s memory and its survivors reveals the many ways we might learn to praise the abundant sacredness of the greater-than-human world. Like the prophets of old who cried out in the wilderness, Axelrod offers possible visions of healing for “a future world / where a young aspen grove // yields back all of summer’s light into air.” ”