In Beauty We Are Made Visible

In Beauty We Are Made Visible
by Christine Morro

Christine Morro reads the subtle space between the human and the Earth and exquisitely translates it. What is this space? It is the sole of the foot on moist sand, the touch of morning sky on the eye, the brush of a heron's wingbeat against the ear. "To miss any of this world is the taste of despair, " Morro writes. She misses nothing, and her poems open us up more fully to the mystery of every moment.

-Trebbe Johnson, author of Radical Joy for Hard Times and other books

In Beauty We Are Made Visible is a moving meditation on connection, that "ancient contract of belonging". Its poems shape silence into a space of elemental reflection, reminding us of the multiple points of contact between humans and Earth itself. Through Christine Morro's luminous language, worlds of water, stone and air become intimate, animate, and familiar. Attention becomes an act of loving. "What do we do", she asks, "with these moments / that feel like transmission". This beautiful and compelling collection is her reply.

-Julian Hoffman, author of Irreplaceable and The Small Heart of Things

For years, I've trusted Christine Morro to send a word into the world that would illuminate the world. A note from her would arrive like a breeze, a slant of light. Her artwork, likewise: always a refresh to the soul, to eyes grown dull, to sky and water itself. In this new collection of poems, there is a deep and rare invocation to recognize how interwoven we are with the beauty of being, and how that recognition brings the sacred to life in our lives.

To read these poems is to have the honor of walking along with her, to spy a berry that changes the landscape, to let that landscape heal, and change over the suffering of our separateness into the intimate home we habitually forget:

Let the earth change you, heal you back
and suddenly in the violet dark
stubborn red berries adorn
a monochrome landscape

When one of her poems intones to miss any of this world is to taste of despair we are called from the comfortable couches of our days and out to see, to know ourselves more clearly and vividly, into the wind and light we might have forgotten was our bloodstream, our breath.

-Bonnie Myotai Treace, Zen Teacher at Hermitage Heart

About The Author

Walker, listener, intuitive each morning a beginner.

Christine Morro writes poetry and creates art informed by the anima of the natural world, inspired by the sacred in the ordinary, the flight of shorebirds and the just after. Enlarged by encounters with the more than human world she seeks to enter this opening through a weaving back into our eco mythological story to live the question 'how to belong to earth'. Her writing is an offering to readers in the form of prayers, poems, incantations. A reminder to keep pace with the earth, to be entrusted to her longing and to navigate uncertainty with attention and presence.

Christine's poetry has appeared in Reliquiae published by Corbel Stone Press. Her prose and photography have appeared in Minding Nature, Autumn 2019 Center for Humans and Nature, Landlines published by Leeds University UK, The Pilgrim, Summer 2021, Flyway Journal 2022.

Find out more about Christine Morro's photography and work at: [email protected]