Lyrics for Old Lovers conjures up couples walking down a beach holding hands, smiling contentedly into the setting sun, but old love is not like one of those three-mast sailing ships in a bottle with no waves and no wind. Old love tests the heart.

These poems are about living a lifetime together, happy, funny, familiar years of growing old with the one you love, but they are also about tough years of caregiving and heartache, of loss and survival, of regrets and loneliness.

The poet has lived these poems, finally discovering a need in herself to accept life again and move on. Yes, life again, in the form of another love; and because love comes in all ages, she finds that old love "without the urgencies of youth" can be soft and sweet and easy on the heart.

"It is often said that neither poetry nor philosophy would exist were it not for humankind's timeless preoccupation with love and death. In her latest collection of poems, Hardy-McDonald probes the subject of love, and she does so with extraordinary courage, clarity and insight. By turns romantic, realistic, turgid with longing, and subtly erotic, these poems also explore the inevitable loss which makes love so poignant and the courageous recovery from that loss which new love may bring. Few poets have written of love with such deep feeling, honesty, understanding, reflection, hard-earned wisdom, and artistry."--Larry D. Thomas, 2008 Texas Poet Laureate