NEW HOPE INTERNATIONAL REVIEW

This collection has been lovingly produced by the author, published in a limited edition of 300 copies, each hand-stamped, sewn and numbered by the author. And it is simply, a delight.

Twenty-one wonderfully considered poems meticulously presented on the page, then carefully assembled and hand-sewn and blocked. Thus there is a very real sense of being favoured by the poet in the receipt of the work.

Clearly these are poems of nostalgia and beginnings, poems of past loves and relationships as well as signage towards eternity.

In MEETING PAUL BUNYAN a relationship still echoes:

					we are
	
	harboured          ancient hamadryad
		      I held your hand      through planted
		      husbandry       endless falls of pining

	      together we carve legends into wood
		      paint fingers lips and tongues
		      blue as your bull       blood red as my
	
	beguin     I am axefall       the timbre
		      of your voice      clutching
		      bare the branches

	there are satellites in my
	backyard         searching
	signs of spring and
	the first flight out of here

	...

	this city knows nothing
	of the wilds of my childhood
	it has never run
	barefoot through the pickybushes

	what time can never bring

	us     back

	a room peppered to grey    ex-
	amorists   pharos

	fading
		can not stand still

	it never did

	as we cartwheel
	through the prairies   high on
	wooden horses      and youth

	Three Ravens
	danced through the air
	on the day you were born
	...
	when you were taken 
	just one dark
	shadow     followed

	carrying long ribbons
	of wind    in your wake

	if you bend to read
	this topography
	of assembled
	dreams

		you will hear me
		softly, barefoot
		singing down my prayers
		at the beginning
	of my seventh sleep

BAREFOOT THROUGH THE PICKYBUSHES is a collection to acquire for all manner of reasons. It is, as I have said, a delight for any reader and should be read and re-read. And it should be prescribed for aspiring poets to see how it should be done