Church of the Robin's Ha-Ha!

<p><em>Church of the Robin’s Ha-Ha!</em> the title poem of this collection underscores John Burroughs’ essentially religious connection to nature. For the famed Catskill naturalist and writer “heaven on earth” was no mere cliché but a reality. His parents’ Calvinist preoccupation with the heaven to come seemed to him tragically misguided and counter-productive. Still as Anne Richey reminds us Burroughs’ love for the earth was tempered by eyes determinedly wide open: yes bird song enchants us but somewhere a snake is devouring a baby bird. In other poems all set in the Catskills Richey keeps faith with Burroughs’ devotion to the near-at-hand – the sunlit and the dark: a doting mother photographs her two boys a dog cowers in fear a man appears to walk on water . . .</p>