The poems in this book are an attempt to speak in acommon tongue with mountains, rivers, and forests. Too often poetry is thought of as the domain of human creativity with its source in the depths of the imagination. We use it to speak of the world, but not to the non-??human worldalet alone with it. The poems in Estuaries suggest that speech and poetry are fundamentally rooted in the ecosystemathe detritus of fallen leaves, the curvature of ariver bend, and the sound of rain on aheron's wings. All of this might be regarded as the speech of the Earth. When we speak or write poetry that engages these voices we become participant in the patterns of the watershed.

Photographer(s): James Liter