Relict by Brian Mosher

 

Brian Mosher, in his new collection of poems RELICT, searches for what remains after the loss of loved ones. What remains are photographs: four brothers,/youngest to oldest, left to right:/my father and uncles,/who all share my face./Also wisdom, inherent knowledge,/as a river knows where to flow,/as the oak tree understands/the value of its shadow./ Then, empathy…this the only time I ever saw him cry./Such was the measure of this man, /the loss which hurt him most was not his own./ And of course, hope to mingle with/the scars, to soothe the aches, to warm /the joints, 

 

Finally, what remains is this wonderful collection of poems. 

—David R. Surette, author of Tonic 

 

“This collection pairs the easy charm of storytelling with the biting grief of a poet grasping for the right words. The respect Mosher shows for those who came before him is tempered with the knowledge that he just doesn’t know any more than what he’s seen. And so what he shares with us are memories, lessons, histories of men who built family, tradition, and home for each other. This is a collection for those who have felt a legacy resting squarely on their shoulders and felt unsure of where to go next. Brian’s poetry reminds us to go with what we know to be true.”     

–Sarah Jane Mulvey, Poet Laureate of the City of New Bedford 

 

In this collection of confessional poetry, Mosher probes stories of family and uncovers the rich emotional subtexts  beneath seemingly ordinary exchanges between father and son, husband and wife, and father and child. His free verse, unadorned, direct, full of fierce self-examination, is both poignant and artful. 

–Lynne Viti, Poet  Laureate of Westwood, Massachusetts 

 

Some memories, like relics, are imbued with the power to heal. The poems in Brian Mosher’s, Relict offer a familiar, healing warmth. They speak of the grace in each person’s origin story that has the power to save us, if only we will learn from it. That sense of salvation is stitched like a scarlet thread through this collection. Mosher’s details snug readers up to the century old woodstove in Aunt Gus’s kitchen. They capture the scene of a husband comforting his wife as she takes in the news of her father’s death: “Such was the measure of this man/ the loss which hurt him most was not his own”. We hear the voices of uncles— their childhood escapades knitting present to past as they sit in their sacred circle on green plastic lawn chairs, summer’s light fading. And sometimes, the inward gaze reveals a glimmer of self-reflection — self-knowledge breaking through as in the poem, “I Remember the Blood, Mostly” in which a son discovers his father  

 

Face down on the hardwood, 

halfway out of the bathroom, 

his breath pushed the blood, 

spread it wider, toward the linen closet.  

 

That last detail embeds the tragic in the quotidian. Will that ordinary space ever be the same? Should it be? In a later poem, “Lighter Than Any Feather” the speaker ends by saying,  

 

I cannot read the book of life 

written in my father’s soul. 

I know only what I know. 

 

And we understand from this brief lyric—accepting that we will never know the  whole life of another makes what we do know more sacred. What memories we have will be the relics we carry on our own journies. Mosher’s poems celebrate the twin miracles of love and forgiveness (both of self and of others). Spare and clear, they nourish the heart. 

—Miriam O’Neal, Poet Laureate of Plymouth Mass., and author of The Half Said Things and The Body Dialogues