Passion's Evidence Barbara Fifield

You are in my vein’s pulse,



the air that beats past,



the car’s rhythm.







Remove the blade



so I may heal.







From the lush and sensual to the quiet and serene, Passion’s Evidence opens up a newly observed world for women and men to appreciate and experience in this collection of finely crafted poems.







Composed over the last twenty-five years, Fifield’s free verse offers the honesty and clarity of an attentive woman’s observations of family, men, nature, and other aspects of life she has graced with her artist’s eye. Her poetry ranges from the rich lines of “Picking Strawberries”







blushing rubies of succulent flesh



food for ancient deities







to the quietly dramatic opening of “Memories in the Orchard”







Through knotted grass, dandelions



gnarled roots, bracke,



I enter the apple orchard.







Fifield not only explores the panoramic emotions of love—sometimes satisfied, sometimes unrequited—and the connections of a woman’s heart to her husband, her daughter, her mother-in-law, but she also conveys with skill and grace the sometimes complex emotions a woman may have in life:







You ask me to dance with the wind



but knees are stiff from



too much bending.







In this impressive collection of poems, Fifield presents in full color the real, the actual, the tangible in life and then delicately laces it with hints of the shimmering potential still therein.