On the Wing by Samantha Terrell
Published by Jane’s Studio Press

Review by Lawrence Moore

“All may be lost to time tomorrow,
but today owns every joy and sorrow”

Samantha Terrell’s On the Wing is a murmuration of poems, each a beautiful
creature in its own right, yet each a melodious piece of something grander.

A cyclical collection, it takes the reader on a winged journey over four seasons, all the while encouraging them to witness the world through a child’s, or perhaps more accurately, a bird’s eyes.

This sense of innocent absorption is palpable from the get-go with “Reverie” in all its bead stringing, music savoring, dragonfly studying joy. Following on, “A Day” sings an achingly poetic call to the present tense; not the last such appeal to be found within these pages.

“Shots from arrows pointed purposefully at hearts,
sometimes, get blocked.“

We are led through the advent of spring by a series of affectionate avian odes, before we arrive at “A Storm Called Cupid”, a tale which manages, even as it initially talks of love’s aim gone wrong, to offer comfort in light of the strength and assuredness of its words. Jane Cornwell’s accompanying artwork, a standout among consistently excellent illustrations, features a weather map overspread by isobars, with a heart placed over her beloved Scotland.

“Call my eyes upward
to remember again,
there is an aqua sky“

A similar assuredness permeates “Call Me Home”, causing another not entirely happy poem still to sink like a balm within the troubled reader’s soul. The light-footed rhythm and last stanza’s slight refrain serve to enhance the strong sense of musicality conjured up by Terrell’s words.

“I am content as distant windchimes
brush against my eardrum.“

Firmly into Summer now, the highly descriptive opening lines of “Dappled (On Impending Loss)” anchor us in the bittersweetness of borrowed time passed in the company of a loved one. By doing so, they provide another poignant reminder of the inimitable value of the present.

“For dormancy, though it may be dim, differs so from death.“

As “Decomposition” and “Seasons of Change” work their magic, the coldness is settling in to On the Wing until we find ourselves lost “In Dark Shadows”, where life seeks shelter and beats retreat, but the bugs still wriggle and writhe beneath the surface.

“Perhaps, with reflection,
we can learn.“

As witnessed in 2023’s Confronting the Elements, Terrell is a passionate, outspoken writer, deeply concerned by the footprint of recent human activity. These convictions come to the fore in “Collective Crisis” and “Let’s Dance”, two poems interlinked in a similar manner to the blackbirds they portray, combining to juxtapose the “cooperation, teamwork, and humility” shown by the birds with the dog-eat-dog world of humankind, then imploring us to change for the better.

“We’ll catch a glimpse of a bird on the wing,
and in its splendor, find ourselves accepting
we’re all growing towards a moment.“

As both book and year draw to a close, “Behold” is a celebration of all things wondrous in nature, be they mysterious or entirely explainable, which gets one thinking maybe it is a child’s eyes Terrell wants us to see through, that we may fully appreciate the beauty of living. In the magical closer, “Revelation”, we are again urged to look beyond dismissiveness and cynicism to see that in our present and sometimes prosaic seeming moments, there is poetry and music to be found; that a life On the Wing is a life spent in flight.

From Lawrence Moore’s Foreword to On the Wing

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Samantha Terrell is a Pushcart-nominated poet and author of multiple five-star collections. Her socially-conscious work has been widely anthologized in publications such as:  Dark Winter Lit, Door = Jar, In Parentheses, Misfit Magazine, Nine Cloud Journal, Red Ogre Review, and others. A native of the American Midwest, Terrell and her family now reside in Upstate New York.