Close Enough

In Mike Dillon's Close Enough, luminous scenes from a lifetime unfold through poetry and prose in a pilgrim's progress toward an I-Thou relationship with the world. The introductory poem, Kyoto, echoing the Japanese haiku master Basho, sets the tone: to stand in the heart of Kyoto/longing for Kyoto. Born in 1950, Dillon grew up with his father's silent legacy of combat in World War II. In the prose passage, Vietnam, he waits for the school bus with the other kids when an older boy, doomed to die in Vietnam, pulls a prank that thrills them all. And then: The school bus neared. The brakes scritched. The yellow door buckled open. And we all boarded for the same destination. For a little while longer. Against the backdrop of history, comes the author's personal search for the crossroads of time and eternity, where the there's a light "that carries/an unbroken thread./As it was. And is.

Close Enough carries forward the resonant themes from Dillon's 2021 chapbook, The Return, from Finishing Line Press. British reviewer Matthew Paul, writing of The Return in Sphinx, noted that Dillon "seems to be seeking a silence just out of reach, bearing the influences of haiku, tanka, Chinese poetry and the likes of Snyder and Rexroth. At his sparest, his poetry takes on a rare limpidity worthy of those influences.