Northbound Single Lane
Marsha Mathews
Mathews explores, with two children in tow, the wonders of a museum, an Appalachian trail, a garden plot in her new home and her first view of snow. Add to these stories a few more with themes of pregnancy, childbirth, motherhood, falling in love, divorce, and single parenting. Mathews provides a tightly woven work which scales the heights of human experience and emotion.
For male readers, many of the topics in Northbound Single Lane are terra incognita, so the first poem to strike a resonant chord for me was”Death Pulls me South.” This poem is the author's tale of her travel to her dad's funeral. It called to mind my own fathers death, at 92, and his graveside service, complete with bugle and twenty-one gun salute. The visitation she describes is quite different, but loss and mourning are universal, and her words bring the point home with eloquence and sad beauty.
Reviewed by Ray Zimmerman, Executive Editor
Southern Light Press
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