Cold Comes Through

Life is about loss. In the end, we all die. Yet we may face illness and reduced capacity, expected and unexpected, with fear or courage, faith or despair. These poems are about that experience. They include love and hope woven by human beings, against the darker background of inevitability. There is some escapism in these pages also, and a couple of funny bits as well. The untimely death of my father was the inspiration for more than one of these poems. Sometimes funerals seem to come in flocks, with a new loss every few weeks. Sometimes a chance remark will bring back an image, a laugh, a ghost. I have captured some of that in this volume. You will find cinquains, mirrors, rhymed stanzas, a rondeau, one prose poem, and blank verse. You will find deliberate ambiguity and harsh accuracy. Some poems are easily accessible, and others may benefit from a second reading. Some are literal and some figurative. You'll figure all this out. These poems were written for us, that is, for you