The first thing that struck me was the amazing cover. A stunning photo by Dreamtwist of an orca breaching from dark grey ocean water under brooding cloud cover speaks to the many themes in this powerhouse of a poetry collection.

Fear and overcoming, danger and resisting, survival and uprising: all of this is filtered through “the weapon / of my tongue, how it lashes.” These lines, from the collection’s first poem, “Brighton Beach,” set up the reader for the coastline creativity carried over from the cover, in which the speaker is transformed from a dime in the sand to,

             a bottom feeder
     with patient lungs

     I will gorge myself on the ocean floor
     & rise up,
                 grinning

     a mouth full of shells
     ready to shatter into words

The oceanic images continue throughout the book as we, too, are invited into this liminal and transformational space at the edge of land and water.

In “The earth wove a casket of reeds,” we humans are, like the speaker, “a shard of glass” and “an oil slick, rusted hubcap”–all the detritus our living has created and mined and invented that now threatens the existence of the planet.

Siskiyous and Madrones and Redwoods–the trees of the Pacific Northwest that have not yet been felled–also populate the poems like haunting spells as the speaker navigates her human presence on trains and buses while, in the poem “Migrants,” “human beings are dying by the hundreds.”

The three-page prose poem, “swinging steadfast from a tender branch,” from which the collection gets its title, appears in the center of the book and serves as a guide for such times:

     “When poplar leaves tremble, they do not ache.”
     
     “Cottonwoods drop their boughs of hollow heartwood and something is set       
           free.”

     …

     “A sprout's cocoon can hold life, latent, for years if conditions are not right.”
     
     “As a child, I tugged around a length of kelp at the coast, claimed it as my pet 
          for the day.”

     …

     “From above, I have wrestled with the way clouds weep.”
     
     “I will myself not to look away.”

The second half of the book pivots gently toward human relations of memory and desire and food and craving with images of fruit vendors, Frangelico with Coke and a French kiss, a plate of peppers with huge salt crystals, and M who “taught me how / to savor my food.”

But then, the pandemic.

In “Breakthrough,” the poet counts and recounts the days of testing positive when “fatigue hits / like grief.” This contrast between the grand sweep of the landscape and our own tiny, human vulnerability lies at the heart of Judy Nahum’s poetry.

I find her on LinkedIn:

My academic background is in public health and food systems and I’m dedicated to promoting racial,
social, and environmental justice. I have extensive experience working in small and large non-profits
and government agencies. My skills in project management, communications, community engagement,
and writing support my work in promoting health equity in Oregon and a more equitable health care
system more broadly. Additionally, I’ve worked as a freelance journalist focusing on climate, health,
and sustainable food systems.”

Oh, yes, I think. Poet as political justice warrior. Poet as promoter of equity. For all. Poetry is about the we.
We the child who “tugged around a length of kelp at the coast, claimed it as my pet for the day.”
We the child who “might fool myself into loving the clouds.”
We the woman who watches her daughter “sleeping soundly / her moth coated with sugar.”
We the woman who scrubs “sheets / scorched by the scent of you.”
We the orca whale, J35, who in 2018,

                                                 carried

     her dead newborn calf with her for 17 days
                 through the Salish Sea because grief

     is a force like gravity, or inertia; to resist
                 is to pledge allegiance

     to another planet, even for a whale.

In this, the final poem of the book, titled, “yakamoz” — which in Turkish means “the reflection of moonlight on water” – the poet opens us to her desire to claim this word, this image, for the nmeaning and feeling of our own collective grief.

The migrants are not being deported alone. The trees are not falling alone. The trash is not entering the oceans alone. Poetry witnesses to them all.

Poetry is what can serve as “a balm for / pain as big as a whale’s.”