In the Garden

Poetry. The poems in this collection are rooted in the seasons' cycles. The territory is local—the back yard's vegetable and flower gardens bordered by meadows and woods. Cardinals court among apple blossoms. A baby skunk lies dead in the field surrounded by vultures while the larger world's traffic hums across the valley. The gardener ponders what it is possible to know while weeding field grass from between vegetable rows. The harvest: these poems of wonder, lament, celebration and praise.

"These well-wrought, eloquent poems carry the reader through the seasonal labors and joys of gardening, at times touching on personal, political, and spiritual matters. The rituals and sharply observed sensual details of soil, bud, and bloom, of insect, bird, and animal life, root the poems firmly in both garden and world. The poems surprise and delight as they explore these connections, sometimes treating dark truths but always finding compensatory implications in the human and natural orders."—Graham Duncan.