Poetry writing has proven proficient at helping me see what is there to be seen, hear what is there to be heard. I will see or hear or reflect on something which then provides an image, a nuance that emerges in a word, a line. The single line and image, written, provides a cadence, a focus of sound and echo that invites a second line, and more. Usually, the poems come quickly and run until they stop: the poem is complete. This book draws upon such poems over a pair of sweeps of my history plus a sampling of more recent poems that strike me as desirable in this collection. These pieces of my past often recollect for me the occasion that sparked the poems but also leave that occasion obscured and allow the poem to do its work of creating an image and a flow in my own mind. The poems, in my experience, write their meaning on my mind. And, I hope, on yours as well. For then the poems will have done their work.