Who peoples our lives, making there a city of care, of hope, and often as not, of despair? Those whom we would not let go, even in anger; those who leave, despite entreaties and tears. Those who sculpt molecules into us, fingerpaint fantasies onto the infant mind, grapple with the goblins of childhood and the real terrors of adolescence. Those who, in our adulthood, reveal themselves as fairies, ogres, the disappointing stuff of common clay. Such people---my people---make my story, which I sing here in lyric poems.
