This collection of 100 poems by Don Hynes resonate with the rhythms of crashing waves and towering forests from the heart of the Pacific Northwest. Hynes explores the rugged beauty of trees, rocks, and rolling waves through an intimately personal lens.
More than nature poetry, these are soul poems – borne of memory, heartache, and dream visions. They reach transcendentally across time and space to connect with the reader’s own experiences of change and self-discovery.
Poems that reach into lifetimes – past, present and those to be imagined, and in the tradition of America’s most enlightened poets such as Mary Oliver and William Stafford, speak in a quiet voice of your place on earth and the place you are preparing.
Dawn’s first glow rises in the east, stirring the valley with the touch of life— orange blush bathes the sky, beacon lit across the divide. In the quiet hush between night and day, I set my compass by sorrow’s star, and cross the threshold from shadow to light.
Hungry for rain, earth and sea open to the vast sky. Rain gods descend, soaking the parched land and starved trees. I hunker down, wet to the marrow, grateful as only an old man can be before the earth altar.
Grace is not forgotten— the slender threads of love’s garment are not to be undone. Scatter death’s ashes in the winter forest, and from the darkened earth life will rise, life will rise.
