These poems move between scales of time—from petrified forests and ancient rocks to abandoned churches being slowly reclaimed by nature, to the personal decades of one man's life. The centerpiece, "Timeline," traces the poet's journey from 1950s childhood solitude through adolescent longing, the disco years, the devastation of the AIDS crisis, and into the quieter waters of later life.
Water runs through the collection as time's current, carrying us forward even as we look back. "Chants While Looking Back" confronts the plague years with the haunting refrain: "It could have been me; / Why was it not?" Quieter pieces meditate on memory, aging, and what remains in old photographs of those who came before.
Several poems have been recognized by the Bainbridge Island Poetry Corners and Ars Poetica.
A collection for anyone who has stood at the stream and watched the current pass.
