POETRY

THE BOOK OF MOSS by Benjamin Saltman (Garden Street Press: $7.95; 55 pp . ) Everyone who knows Benjamin Saltman (he teaches at California State University at Northridge) comments on his rare and humble sensibility; indeed, this is the quality that leaps off the page. Saltman notices details as though he had been gone for a long time, and returned to a strange sad planet that he still loves: “the trash cans, emptied this morning,/ sit quietly; some huddle together,/ some tilt like empty, open cannon/ that once held civilization./ A few have fallen on the curb/ as if they will never be filled again.” There is something else to love, and that is his stately acceptance of the passage of time, as he “lengthen(s) toward sleep.” In the first poem of the collection, “Myself as a House,” Saltman writes: “Please convince me that holding on/ is as good as flying . . . “ and after you close the book, it seems clear that Saltman has done both.