Antonia Clark

Chameleon Moon Antonia Clark

Chameleon Moon includes poems of love, loss, awakening, and peacemaking. The first section, "Smoke and Mirrors," contains some of the poet's most personal. Though many are about the loss of loved ones, they also speak of how the dead go on living, always present in our lives. The second section, "Dawn in the Glass House," illustrates a growing awareness of oneself and one's place in the world. The speakers in these poems stumble forward, sometimes with a kind of blind faith, through bad relationships, confusion, and illogic in search of solid ground and self-understanding. It comes. As we are told in "Afternoon Rain," "A woman holds back the truth of her life as long as she's able, then spills everything, learns that she's always been insatiable." The final section, "Amends," contains poems of reconciliation and acceptance. They are about perseverance and of finding peace and comfort in a world that often cannot give us the answers we seek. A life settles into a pattern, knowledge settles into the bone. In the final poem, "Directions," the poet concludes, "If someone should ask, I can say this much: Turn anywhere, and then keep going."