Acknowledgments

Sincere thanks to—

Lynne Van Luven, Katherin Edwards, Luanne Armstrong, Merilyn Simonds and Wayne Grady for weighing in on earlier versions of this manuscript.

Barbara Berson for the touch of a jeweller’s cloth, removing buildup and tarnish, helping to give my words a bit more lustre and finish; Cheryl Cohen, for the touch of a jeweller’s loupe, catching and correcting details I would surely have otherwise missed.

Anna Comfort O’Keeffe for her friendly professionalism and all the folks at Harbour Publishing who guided me through the process with such expertise and good cheer.

Wayne, my family and my friends—thanks for being such fine company on this trail.

“The Gaze” was shortlisted for the Edna Staebler Personal Essay Contest and published in TNQ’s Summer 2016 issue.

Some lines in the book have been borrowed from previous poems of mine—“Absorption I” and “Absorption II,” published in the Spring 2012 issue of The Fiddlehead, and “You Know Me Better than I Know Myself,” published in Erratic (Hagios Press, 2007).