Timing is Everything

Looking for a book to read on a cold dark night when the light of day is hours away? This is it. Looking for some poems to read in the bleak midwinter when the vernal equinox is weeks away? These are they. When a loved one has gone never to return, or you yourself are never coming back. That's the time to read these poems because, as the poet says, "Timing is Everything." The title poem, occurring second to last in the book, warns the reader of leaving things too late. Despite what we've been taught all of our lives, there will not always be time: "You send note after note after note: 'Come to me, Love! / I'm ready now!' . . . Then you learn / I died a decade or two earlier and you didn't / even realize, you heard nothing, your heart / didn't pick it up through the ether. . . . "