The Next Breath

<p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>A collection of 45 poems in 5 sections </span><em style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>The Next Breath</em><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> traverses the last 50 years of the 20th century and the first decades of the 21st but not in a sequential way. The first poem of the book Twenty Twenty is a kind of prologue that takes us right into the current pandemic while the next poem Visitors a ghostly third-person meditation with a vague sense of modernity leads into another poem squarely placed in a small midcentury town in the Midwest where the first-person narrative describes a mother's French toast. One could say these are quotidian poems dealing with the small at times humiliating details of life. One could also say that the poems are a powerful and poignant study of self. Self-actualization -realization and -awareness. Generously accessible readers cannot help but come to know the poet better and if they savor the words deeply enough discover more about themselves. The collection comes to an end that contemplates the impact of global warming tempered by a postlude poem Missive that suspends time and place in a dreamy meditative way.</span></p>