Both Feet on the Land: Four Seasons of Connections and Reflections At Creekside Edge

Years become decades while dwelling at one place, beside one creek called home on the westslope oak-woodland belt of the bright-peaked Backbone Range. Season yields to season. Familiar trees, rocks, fruits, grass, tools, animals and barn, repeated chores, rededicated studies, the same walks, the same walls. Within the everyday tho age-old scene or event, within the ever near-at-hand but rushed-by sight, hides the transformative insight. In meeting the land mind meets itself. Then begins the innerwork. Together here we engage what is most basic, most urgent, what in busy whirls of activity is most easily overlooked. The poet offers neither a thought-system nor a step-by-step method for improving one's lot, rather presents an occasion to note, to absorb the simple fact of life's compelling mystery. One instant of attention. In each of these lyric or narrative poems we encounter an intimate discovery, an immediate opening, a something newly made one's own.