The final – and title – poem of Paul Nelson’s exhilarating new book gives us a stark image of our likely future, living collectively in an old house that has been badly neglected, burning our own furniture to keep warm. Against this terrible possibility, the rest of the poems struggle, reminding us of who we have been and who we still have the chance to be, people who live close to the world that was given us. Whether it is fishing or farming, migrating across the globe or sitting still by a stream, these lush poems of personal experience call us back to something like our mythic sources. – Roger Mitchell, author of Lemon Peeled the Moment Before: New and Selected 1967-2008