Muscle Tree

<p>In Barbara Parchim's keenly observed poems trees birds humans and octopi are neighbors friends and confidantes. But far from anthropomorphizing this is a book of conversations with the living: robins feasting on a too-brief crop of berries a tree with a dangerous limb hanging over a street a doctor-turned-potter finding new ways to view the body. Whether she's walking us through a pet cemetery quietly returning to the forest or the animals of Chernobyl inhabiting the ruins of human folly Parchim moves us from celebration to elegy with a startling depth of knowledge-and a love for what we're losing and what we still have.</p><p><br></p><p>-Amy Miller author of <em>Astronauts </em>and <em>The Trouble with New England Girls</em></p>