Robert Michael Pyle’s new poems are exquisitely shaped by his learned, joyful, avid consideration of the natural world and its cycles of life, death, and rebirth. Grief for his late wife, “she who made sense of the world,” is balanced by all they had and did together, and what comes next. At the heart of this marvelous book is the saving grace of close observation, the life-affirming depth of feeling and engagement and understanding of birds, butterflies, fish, critters, the rich flora all around us. Pyle savors and praises, seeing what joins us to our environment and what it can show us of ourselves, lifting his and our spirits. His richly descriptive language embeds in his readers’ minds such wonders as the way “the papery vanes” of butterfly wings “make hope/from nothing more than nectar and dust.”
—Floyd Skloot
From Pangaea to pledge drives, “Pedestrains on Roadway” signs to a platypus’ silky pelt, these poems cover terrain, species, and moments too often overlooked. Thankfully, Robert Michael Pyle’s life work as a naturalist means he doesn’t miss much, and his keen observations of the natural and human world are fully in evidence in this fine collection. Here, the reader will find poems ranging from the pleasure of pencil shavings to moving poems written for the poet’s late wife Thea. Pyle’s delight in language and lively wit sound clearly throughout, whether describing a Yuletide smorgasbord or his neighbors: “the Douglases, fir and squirrel; the Townsends, vole and mole.” In the words of the title poem: “What gifts these are.”
—Holly Hughes
