These poems do what poems should: they interrogate the world in the name of the earth. They are not rhetorical questions. They concern the sacredness of life. The voice here is serious but not grave. They are spoken from an ancient tradition by a man who is a father, a husband, an elder of an extended family that includes you, the reader. They question, sometimes with biting humor, the authority of a world that ignores-or worse-destroys the bonds of humanity to the sources of life in the earth. They celebrate the music and poetry throughout human culture that nourish the roots of community. The poems become brief ceremonies that remind us of our original belonging in the company of love. -Bill Tremblay, award-winning poet