Sabbaths

The strong religious undercurrent in Berry's work, surfaces in this gathering of Sunday meditations, most of them set in regular verse forms: quatrain, couplet, sonnet, terza rima, and some more intricate. Contemplating on the cycle of life, Berry sees all living things as expressions of the holy light conjured from darkness in the primal act of creation. "The darkness, too, is holy, the resting place and wellspring of light and life," he says as he considers his own work of farming, particularly affectingly in the long poem addressed "To Den," written for his son. The collection's acmes, however, come in lyrics of pure praise, such as those on the winter wren, on paired swallows, and on the great trees. ISBN 0-86547-289-0: $12.95.