Between Darkness & Trust

“Between Darkness & Trust moves into the dusky rooms of memory, the shaded places of present time, ‘where something is always changing/ until changing finally into itself.’ It takes a poet like Ferra, whose careful wordcraft and piercing vision are honed by long experience, to help us recognize that self, and what it can mean in our lives, so that we have ‘Another/day, another/chance to change.’ ‘Trust’ comes from an old Norse word meaning ‘strength,’ like the grandmother she writes of who bakes bread for her family so that they might eat when she lies down to die. Who would not trust such a one?”

—Samuel Green, Inaugural Poet Laureate, Washington State

“In Ferra’s exquisite book, every plain-spoken meditation glows with a radiance that will take your breath away: poems that offer observations— each moment evoked with such precision, such humility, that to read

several together is to feel like a gong that’s been struck, so gently it makes no sound but offers a sense of unexpected connectedness, not only to the poet and the natural world (which she portrays with Zenlike

attention) but also to the human family. No matter what scars you may carry, or what stress you bring home from your days, this collection will be a shawl to warm you, an arm around your shoulders, an encouragement, a balm.”

—Ingrid Wendt, author of Evensong and Surgeonfish