In the Bright Light of Solitude

poems by

Rebecca Suzan Watts

~70 pages, $14 (+ shipping)

Projected Release Date: April 2027

The Advance Sale Discount price on this book is $8.50. For those who prefer to pay by check, the discount price is $12.50/book (which includes shipping & sales tax) and should be sent to: Main Street Rag, 12180 Skyview Drive, Edinboro, PA 16412. Both advance sale prices will expire once the book is sent to press. 

PLEASE NOTE: Ordering in advance of the release date entitles the buyer to a discount. It does not mean the book will ship before the date posted above and the price only applies to copies ordered through the Main Street Rag Online Bookstore.

Rebecca Suzan Watts lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where she and her husband moved a few years after she retired from her career as a public librarian in Peachtree City, Georgia. Prior to becoming a librarian, she was a bookseller, editorial secretary, law firm library assistant, and worked in IT at a major health non-profit. She spent most of her life in Florida and Georgia, so it has taken her several years to understand that North Carolina still isn’t THE North. Rebecca facilitates a weekly poetry group for older adults and attends one or two poetry readings with open mics each month. In addition to poetry, she also enjoys quilting, hiking, and visiting gardens, museums, and libraries.

Beginning with a child headstrong on a high dive, the board becomes what the poet “makes do” with in this life, until finally, she swan-dives off. Through Florida scrub woods buying Pixie sticks with bottle deposits and family who disown you if you speak up, humor balances grief. With hints of wanting more, Watts takes us on an adventurous journey in search for the self. A read to be savored. ~Liza Wolff-Francis, author of 48 hours down the shore

In In the Bright Light of Solitude, Rebecca Suzan Watts brings uncommon grace to the ordinary world. These poems are intimate, wise, and quietly luminous, finding revelation in family history, grief, marriage, memory, art, and the natural world. Watts writes with warmth, humor, and a deep fidelity to lived experience. This is a collection that reminds us how much mystery and beauty still reside in everyday life. ~William Wright, author of Grass Chapels: New & Selected Poems

Living on the High Dive

I’ve taken up residence on the high dive,
to the consternation of the athletic.

At first, they were annoyed.
Clusters of the Speedoed clung
like birds to the rungs,
each with a caw and a clamor.

I would not be moved. I had
no intention of hitting the water—
neither feet first, nor head.
Backing down the storied steps
was no option—
not frontwards, not back.

It was never about the height,
my refusal to descend.
Only about the depths.

The sandpaper surface suits me now.
The narrow board supports me—
asks nothing, affords much.
The view, for one.
The solitude.
The sparkle of the sun on water.

Yesterday, I pretended the greatness of a gymnast,
gracefully doing back flips,
nailing the landings every time.
When I am a gymnast, the board and I are One.

Today, when the swimmers had given up
and gone home, they let the water out.
They shook their heads, gave sidelong
upward glances, confirming I was still here.

Perhaps they thought this just a summer home.
But don’t they wonder now?

Printing the Ancestral Image

I want the sepia,
that trick of light and tone
that will warm the skin
of my ancestors just a little.
These people, my blood.

But my printer,
depleted of the proper inks,
delivers these people—
most of whom I’ve never met—
in the garish reds of bloodline,
familial connection hard to parse.

Prayer for Peace

I am on my knees
vacuuming under the sofa
when my favorite religious
joke comes to me, once seen
graffitied in a bar’s
bathroom stall:
Saints preserve us,
or we’d all be jelly.

And I think about my sister,
I once deemed Saint Debbie,
newly atheist, cutting asunder
forty-plus years of wedded miss.
One time we talk, and it’s all tears,
so eager to end it,
she’s ready to sacrifice again.

But the proceedings proceed,
feats of will, resolve, strength.
Power versus seduction.
Who is the real manipulator?
The pieces of settlement
stack up like a war-torn game of Jenga.
When next we talk, she relishes
the thought of giving him exactly
what he’s asked for (divorce not his idea):
a deal she sees well in her favor.

And here, my once Biblical scholar,
armed with that Solomon’s choice
of splitting it all, imagines her
can’t-be-too-soon ex’s horror
of realizing that the worst
that could happen,
already has.