Survival Time

The poet's experience of growing up near Assisi, in the shadow of St.Francis's spiritual heritage, illuminates the poems in this collection. Moving to Northern California, she discovers the ocean, coastal fog, the redwoods. Illness imbues love and time with an intense flavor and causes memories to stand in starker relief against a backdrop of darkness alternating with vivid light. A tiny blue fish that looks cut from the night sky becomes a talisman. The poems are rooted in quiet observations of life events past and present. There is a lot of blue in them, not all dark. There are stars, not all in the sky. And there is water: ocean, bay, lake, lagoon, glacier, and geyser. They reflect a life lived fully immersed in spaces born or made sacred.