Sheltered in Place by CJ Giroux

“I want to believe despite what you have become” is a prayer that echoes through this fine collection of moving, richly layered poems, which take us inside Saginaw’s beautiful and ugly places, and the poet’s own questions about faith and life. “In this rustbelt town where broken glass / falls like seeds on sidewalks,” we go on a pilgrimage through the birth of the poet’s child, Lent, Easter, the seasons, aging and loss, the pandemic, and then the empty nest, even as he decides not to destroy the finch nest on his door, leaving the “shelter in place.” Vivid images of nature, flowers, birds, gardens and gardening abound, woven in with Christian symbolism, a desire for rebirth, second chances. “I pray to the God of rescue; / I must stay in place to enter the light.” With Giroux we enter that space, and we too, hope for grace.

–Zilka Joseph, author of Sparrows and Dust, Sharp Blue Search of Flame, What Dread, and Lands I Live In.

“Sheltered in Place” is a beautifully braided exploration of memory (or the loss of), quarantine (or resilience), and place (historical “shelters”). Giroux interlaces the natural world, the made world, and the spirit world, crafting each strand around the passing of time into non-time where we are suspended and ultimately sheltered. These poems and prose-poems, gently embroidered with human failings and tenderness, never lose their heart-felt love of the world and its inhabitants. A chapbook shouldn’t be this all-encompassing, but it is. Oh, it is.

–Anne-Marie Oomen has authored or edited seven books of poetry or nonfiction, most recently ELEMENTAL: A Collection of Michigan Nonfiction, a Michigan Notable Book