These poems by Anne Randolph exude a joyful gratitude for the earth and for every good thing life has to offer. A gardener, she shares with us her experiences with bees, butterflies and birds. A traveler, she takes us on a trip to Cleveland that is just as captivating as her sojourn through England. She falls in love, and introduces us to a friend who has a praying mantis that crawls up her sleeve. Her book inspires a reverence for life, exemplified in a poem in which she describes coaxing a hummingbird out of her garage to freedom: “I stand still as a tree, broom like / a straight branch. In seconds, / he alights on the straw ends. Slowly, / I walk with him, like an acolyte / carrying a cross....” If this is what life does, it is something we all want and need.