there is wisdom in walnuts

The title of Tony Ellis' collection of poems "there is wisdom in walnuts," reflects one of the primary concerns of this collection: the presence and containment of the infinite within its smallest part. Ellis' poems like jewels, spare, serene and pristine in their beauty need no particular setting. They reflect, like clear mirrors unhampered by distortion, the unity and connectedness of all things. Focusing on personal meditative experiences and daily activities, the poems in this collection playfully and longingly touch the edges of eternity. With a minimum of adornment and elaboration, the images presented in these poems move us as through a prism into the center of things. The speaker in these poems seek the oneness and is nourished by his affinity to it. In a single dewdrop the speaker states: from a single drop of dew is the pathway to a million civilizations whose voice we never hear except in the gentle breath of breeze and the quiet hum of life infinitely growing This economy of words, unembroidered, allows for the graceful and effortless slipping of the bonds of the commonplace as we enter timelessness and connect with past and future. The sparkling dewdrop becomes the gateway to connect with the eternal since it carries within itself the essence and the paradigm of all of life and is part of the magnificent and all-encompassing software that is nature. In the poem sometimes, the speaker explains: there is nothing so fulfilling as the white tassle of a carpet seen through the eyes of everything, or a simple green pot sitting clean on a perfect surface