Adiós: My Backyard Stars Comments

This was the first listed of your new poems, but for some reason I consciously decided to read it last. You have always had a way if animating inanimate object. I remember a poem about fear you felt in your house's kitchen that turned out to be something ordinary, but the fear you generated in that poem was real. And your poem last spring about you Mom and grandma painting the front door made that door symbolic of the whole family's existence in love and time. So I'm not surprised to feel eyes staring at you from within those steps, and even an expression of sadness on the steps. This is a tender poem in which your excitement and apprehension are underplayed and the presence of the back steps in your life take the foreground. There is something very reassuring about the immobility of the steps: People use them to come and go in their constant movement, but the steps - people's threshold for homecoming or adventure beyond home - are always there faithful and responsive.