Gelmi writes as a Christian and a seeker of grace and says: If you want to share in God’s glory, you must share in God’s pain. Her collection of poetry speaks to the idea that “to reach the epicenter of His [God’s] heart, that core of peace, there is no shirking that exquisitely painful Ring of Fire.” And with the cast of characters that appear throughout the collection, we face the fire head on.
The collection begins with a stunning piece called “Recoil” filled with haunting imagery, sounds, and textures. It is a poem about inflicting pain upon an innocent and about regret:
I heard the first four measures of Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater
In my head
A soprano sang, accompanied by flutes
I loaded the rifle
the shells were from Czechoslovakia
There were two of them
side by side
A doe and a stag
I shoot with a gloved finger
perhaps out of deference
held the barrel of blued steel
pulled the trigger
and watched him fall
almost human in the brush
Stock-still she stood beside him
Ignorant of the violent habits of men
Focusing beyond me, as if upon an apparition
She did not blink
wide-eyed as a Madonna
Why hadn’t she run?
And so I watched with
an almost percussive remorse
the felled stag
flickering with life
All fur, save for a patch
worn off his thick neck
where she had rested her head
for so long,
following his movements, his lead
I realized then, flutes are too thin for sacred music
I realized she was blind
