Sharon M. Carter's poems speak of a close attention to the world around her. She writes of a living, breathing otherness that feels like worship. There's a mystical thread throughout her work, while at the same time botany appears as a consultant. Science is this poet's first love, made clear in the carefully chosen facts that dance in and out of these incredibly lovely poems.-Pamela Moore Dionne, author of Paradox and Illusion and Taut CaesurasThese spiky but tender poems grow from a complex root system slowly exposed as we read them. Describing the terror of a difficult childbirth, or commenting on a corrupt culture-tell me, when has money made anyone honest?-Carter uses myth and emotion to wrap us in a vine of beauty, memory, and brutal decay. Common flowers and vegetation become metaphors for larger concerns and expand our world exponentially.-Gayle Kaune, author of All the Birds Awake and Noise from Stars