“As rooster’s crow cracks morning’s shell’, this book is a rare time-ride from the unforgettable awakenings of childhood, through the knowledge of what was Lost in the past, into the darker undercurrents that always propel life: glimpsing the Deep and Dark that beckons on the fringes of our journey, Signs that warn and confirm, ending with Some Grins to Boot, much appreciated along the way.

     Becky Alexander will revive all of your senses with childhood delights: tactile, aromatic, breathless adventures and challenges on a farmland home that offered freedom to grow and explore the “secret heart of Hammett’s swamp”, “masked in meadow-grass”, “hide and sneak”.

     The “uncles”, the town icons, “the dab and daub of moss and mold”: people and places who live in memory, gone from today’s geography, are illuminated here.

     “Raven caught in a head-wind, speaks to the Deep and Dark within.

     “I walk these northern woods alone” as do we all at times, addresses the mysticism at our core in Signs.

     In the fifth section Some Grins to Boot, is the magical line “a poem can be a rainbow”: it lights up all the times we treasure, or endure. This book will shelter you in all the wild winds that buffet.

Katherine L. Gordon.

Poet, publisher, judge, reviewer, literary critic.