The Fortunate Era
(Carnegie Mellon, 2013)

---

Praise for The Fortunate Era

“Smith’s life’s work has been a quest for earthly insights into transcendent visions, and he writes as though he were a gentler version of Dante’s Minos, making stoical judgments over moments of his own life, consigning them to placements in hell, purgatory, and up to the brink of heaven.  He’s looked inside and felt the daily terror, yet within that terror, a new life.”  --  Garrett Hongo

Valentine

Back then, for all I cared,
God could have been a spider
Glossy as a buttercup
Sunning in the garden
Of the first woman
Time gave me to
And then took back.

What I mean is, once, like ice,
Something pierced my heart
With a light 
So fierce
It heightened
Every thin-stemmed flower after.

That’s how I think of God now,
Each time--
Going back to her--
That immense and holy cold, an arrow
Sinking in.