White Light of Tomorrow

A masterful new collection from award-winning poet Russell Thornton.With intense lyricism, Thornton records his imaginative movement between the element of water, waking to the aloneness of water, and the phenomenon of light, comprehending light as fate and love as memory of light. In the process, Thornton highlights how hard lives can manifest beauty and affirmation. A mother transcends degrading circumstances through laughter. A long-lost father s drafting set case is a coffin, its tools a skeleton; his ashes are buried in the poet s arm. Revelations of nature abound. Thornton s rainy locale lifts onto the mythical level, water wrapping around him, holding him complete / as within womb water about to break. Herons wings span the countless characters of a creek. A description of an ancient BC site is a rapt engagement with Indigenous petroglyphs. An exploration of a Song of Songs passage details light one with turns of the yarn of a shawl, a touch within a touch. Classical myth informs a poem about a power outage; the speaker enters the elsewhere of the night to build a fire.Passionate and moving, this collection marks a fine advance in Thornton s expanding poetic output.