It’s never a straight path to the writing of a poem, or to the title of a book of poems for that matter. This word lauds, I did not know in the monastic sense before my retreats to a Trappist abbey over in the Willamette Valley. But I think I loved it from the get-go when I discovered it meant praise, thanksgiving. It seemed to me that most of what I was writing then, the collection of poems I would eventually call LAUDS, was about abundance—the gifts of circumstance, place. Gretel, my oldest goat, in a certain way was my muse, guide to the ordinary day I got up in at Farmer Creek. But then poetry reminds us that there is really nothing ordinary if one can slow down enough. Is quiet enough. Circumstance—the opportunity to live by a little salmon creek, year after year on the Oregon coast, to attend my chickens, goats, dogs, cats, family, and to be surrounded by wilderness—inevitably leads to discovery. For the poet, to the work of making poems. Poems that in some instances might carry the feeling of prayer, that kind of emotional intensity when the words are so imbued with vulnerability, thanksgiving.

Tom Crawford
Santa Fe
September 2005