A collection of poems celebrates the many forms that love can take and bemoans the fate of the natural world.

Red bird --Luke -- Maker of all things, even healings -- There is a place beyond ambition -- Self-portrait -- Night and the river -- Boundaries -- Straight talk from Fox -- Another everyday poem -- Visiting the graveyard -- Ocean -- With the blackest of inks -- Invitation -- Orchard -- River far away and long ago -- Night herons -- Summer story -- Teachers -- Percy and Books (eight) -- Summer morning -- Small bodies -- Winter and the Nuthatch -- Crow says -- Sometimes -- Percy (Nine) -- Black Swallowtail -- Red -- Showing the birds -- From this river, when I was a child, I used to drink -- Watching a documentary about polar bears trying to survive on the melting floes -- Of the empire -- Not this, not that -- Iraq -- In the pasture -- Both worlds -- We should be well prepared -- Desire -- I ask Percy how I should live my life (Ten) -- Swimming, one day in August -- Mornings at Blackwater -- Who said this? -- This day, and probably tomorrow also -- Of goodness -- Meadowlark sings and I greet him in return -- When I cried for help -- In the evening, in the Pinewoods -- Love sorrow -- Of love -- Eleven versions of the same poem: Am I lost? -- I don't want to live a small life -- I am the one -- Now comes the long blue cold -- So every day -- If the philosopher is right -- There you were, and it was like spring -- Where are you? -- I wish I loved no one -- I will try -- What is the greatest gift? -- Someday -- Red Bird explains himself.