Sledding the Valley of the Shadow

<p>These supple melodious poems address mortality with humor and wit smacked/ like a mackerel onto the deck/ of the unknowable as the speaker loses family and friends survives her own heart event and surgery and takes care of her wife as she undergoes cancer treatment during the Coronavirus pandemic. Employing spare vivid language she practices appreciation empathy and compassion-for self and others across political aisles and species-and the acceptance of the imperfect as the perfect lesson as welcome or necessary steps to wisdom slipping and sliding a flash-lit joyful snowy way to an abiding gratitude.</p>