The poems in Marg Walker's new collection reflect on life's seeming certainties - what we think is true of ourselves and others - exploring new perspectives opened as time and events disrupt these perceptions. Several poems focus on the child's simplicity of heart, the hidden lives of parents, and the contradictions of tenderness and distance within a family. There are moments of humor as well as unresolved silences as she interrogates memory, reconsiders inherited beliefs, and finds startling recognition of common ground.
In other poems we feel the ache of COVID isolation, the loss of friends to death, and the irreversible toll of time. Whether through quiet contemplation, lighthearted scenes, or vivid dreaming, we travel with the poet toward discovery of what lies at the heart's core - things that cannot change or be taken away. Among them is the recurrent presence of beauty.
Let me not fail to praise
, she writes, and in poem after poem we feel the currents of gratitude that are central to her work. Here is a book that radiates with the shock of pleasure just to be alive.