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Here the Ordered World: The Sabbathday Lake Shaker Village, by Louis Miles (avail able from Friends of the Shakers, Laurelwood, 35 Maple Ridge Lane, Asheville, North Carolina 28806; $10 per book plus $2 postage per order, with checks made payable to "Friends of the Shakers")
Using Laurelwood as his publisher's imprint, Louis Miles, of Asheville, has brought out this collection of poems and photographs. He brings a contemporary poetic response to the world of the only active Shaker community left, near Poland Spring, Maine. For most of us, Aaron Copland's Appalachian Spring – with its use of "Simple Gifts," a Shaker hymn – and Shaker furniture are all that remain to us of these remarkable communities. But as Mr. Miles shows, there is so much more to Shaker life. These poems spring from Mr. Miles's quarter-century of knowing and appreciating the Sabbathday Lake community. The collection is dedicated to the late Sister Mildred, who warns in the Elegy that begins the book, "We Shakers are not another piece/ of furniture... So don't display us like a chair." —K.S.B.
The Village
Summer, With Light Rising
Before my visit to the dwelling house,
its corridor floors golden, polished to a sheen,
the dining hall filled with trestle tables
set for dinner,
the meeting room harsh with light,
I imagined those Shakers living solitary
days of labor,
nights of prayer,
emaciated.
Then, in the library, under the eaves,
where shelves sagged under the burden
of their books,
and papers spilled upon a carpet, royal blue,
to cover by half a leather bound
The Pilgrim's Progress,
my illusion vanished.
The brother noticed my eye lingering
on the pile.
"A gift from friends," he said.
The sisters wore no caps, no kerchiefs.
Across the lawn, in early light,
a woman's figure scampered toward the barn,
Bermuda shorts and sneakers,
flashing white.
And in the shop, another sister,
clutching a Hadley sweater to ward off
morning chill,
dusted cans of herbal tea.
Nostalgia was wrapped about the place,
in sage, perhaps, or lavender,
but the smells mingled with the music
of a distant record player
and were lost.
I bought a box of note cards.
"They're printed here," the sister said.
"Brother Arnold has an offset press."
At dinner, for grace, we stood in silence,
until reverberating air told us
that we were among the living,
not the dead.
Elder Joseph's Maple Tree
Under an Overcast Sky in August
Going or coming on the walkway
between dwelling house and trustees' office
I cross the concrete poured in an arch
to spare the roots of Elder Joseph's maple tree
from footsteps.
Yesterday when passing,
hurrying toward the dwelling house
dining room for dinner,
I reached out with my left hand
to feel the bark,
rough, scaley, cool,
with just a hint of moisture.
The tree returned the touch.
From inside the tree a tremor
vibrated through ringed trunk and bark,
rippled into my fingertips,
into my arm, shoulder, chest,
spreading glowing warmth as it moved,
almost electrical.
I was held fast,
even while dinner waited.
Later at table, another visitor
who was building a new coop
for Sister Marie's chickens,
said to me, "I saw you at Elder Joseph's tree."
"I think I felt its touch."
"Next time you pass, look how
in throwing shadows with its leaves
it builds an ocean,
wave on wave, running forward."
When Sister Mildred heard him,
she sang, "An ocean I see without
bottom or shore –
Oh, feed me, I'm hungry; enrich me, I'm poor."
Afterward, dinner finished,
under a sky grown overcast and gray,
there were no shadows.
Louis Miles was a student in Robert Lowell's graduate seminar in poetry writing at Boston University for three semesters (just missing classes with Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, and George Starbuck, who studied with Lowell during a two-year interval between his first and second courses). In subsequent years his poems were published in university quarterlies and regional and national magazines. Three small books have also appeared: Our Coaming Now is Clover (Stockwell, 1973), In the Filtered Light (Laurelwood, 2000), and Here the Ordered World (Laurelwood, 2005). A West Virginia native with degrees from Berea College, Boston University, and Drew University, Mr. Miles has lived in western North Carolina since 1960 . He taught history, religion, and creative writing at Brevard College before joining the religion department and chaplaincy staff at Warren Wilson College. Following his 1994 retirement, he completed the degree program in professional crafts–jewelry at Haywood Community College.
One of Mr. Myles's primary academic interests is the Shaker religious movement, the focus of Here the Ordered World, which i...
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