Varied in form, these poems offer enough variety for readers repeatedly to experience a renewed sense of surprise as they make their way through the collection.  But they are linked by a strong sense of the speaker’s compassion, spiritual hungers, gentle sense of humor, and rich experience.  She is clearly someone upon whom years of care giving have not been lost:  her skills seem to have fueled her commitment to caring, in all senses.  In one poem she recalls her own development as a child who loved words:  “loved the safe, solid heft of sound // but learned well the silent shapes:  the form of hurt, the sound of sad, / how they reach to fill between.”

The choreography of words and silences in these poems, the thread of metaconversation about words themselves, their limitations and their power, make these poems much more than a record of a medical life deeply lived.  They hold their own as a fine contribution to contemporary poetry that speaks into the lives we are called to live now, the sorrows that belong to this moment we share, and the need for poets who provide consolation and encouragement in their courageous precision.