These twenty-three beautifully crafted poems are by turns dark, tender, defiant, and intensely moving. Some explore the mysteries and beauty of the natural world. Others, more deeply personal, are concerned with love, loss, and mortality. This poetry rises from both searing memory and everyday observation, passed through a lens of compassion and honesty into strength and grace.

"river, horse, morning is engaging, bright, unblinking. Except when soft, when she's riding out of the fog into sunlight...Her command of language pulls the reader into her backyard and up to the stars. One of my favorite poems begins "I had no plans to be/ here on this plane/ on this planet/ but the world had its elbow/ in my ribs from the start." [This is] a gift to poetry lovers."

-Diana Morley, 2019 Oregon Poetry Association award winner and author of Spreading Like Water and Splashing.