Prodigal

"We have lost our ability to name," Francine Marie Tolf writes: "We say antelope, owl, / as if these words had power. / As if the names of animals hadn't long fled / back into animals." Thus, Tolf lays out the major themes of her second collection of poems, Prodigal: nature, animals, and language-plus a fourth: discoveries that occur when one of these intricate living strands intersects with another. Tolf doesn't shy from the savagery humans inflict on earth and other animals, but instead encourages us to reflect and understand if we can. "In This Rain" and "A Good Thing" are brief but chilling examples. Yet this collection of finely tuned poems balances sorrow and outrage with deep joy and delight. Multilayered and intimate, Prodigal offers hope, derived not from cheaply won sentiment, but from an intensely personal conviction welling from an imperfect and compassionate heart: "At its center, / the circle inverts: / the food chain collapses, / the lion eats straw. / Yet tears are not reversed, / but are wiped away. / So necessary to me, that God / who lets tears fall. / Who touches a quail's grief / with his own hand."