Everything Beautiful in its Time

Woodbury poet laureate emerita and Southbury resident Sandy Lee Carlson has published a collection of poems titled Everything Beautiful in its Time with Orenaug Mountain Publishing. 

“The poems come out of the last two years of learning to garden and then watching what the plants do when you get out of their way,” says Carlson, who completed the Master Gardener program through UConn last year and has built several gardens while eradicating invasive plants in her hometown of Woodbury and around her home in Southbury.

“I can sit in my garden and look at the nasturtiums that have migrated across the garden in pursuit of the sun or watch the butterflies come in for a landing on the Joe Pye weed and tell myself all will be right with the world. There is peace here,” Carlson said. “That peace has opened my way of thinking, even as I turn back to the world in all its sometimes troubling complexity. That’s where these poems come from.”

The title comes from the Book of Ecclesiastes—“He hath made every thing beautiful in his time: also he hath set the world in their heart, so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from” (3:11)—and the cover art are images from Carlson’s garden.

“I have a lot to learn. This year, my garden has thrived to the point of locking me out. I can’t find a way in as the flowers do what they do and the insects, butterflies and hummingbird come and go as they please. Maybe it’s the right place though, on the outside looking in. Maybe that’s what poets do.”

Everything Beautiful in its Time is available on Lulu.