This collection of 100 poems by Don Hynes resonate with the rhythms of crashing waves and towering forests from the heart of the Pacific Northwest. Hynes explores the rugged beauty of trees, rocks, and rolling waves through an intimately personal lens.
More than nature poetry, these are soul poems – borne of memory, heartache, and dream visions. They reach transcendentally across time and space to connect with the reader’s own experiences of change and self-discovery.
Poems that reach into lifetimes – past, present and those to be imagined, and in the tradition of America’s most enlightened poets such as Mary Oliver and William Stafford, speak in a quiet voice of your place on earth and the place you are preparing.
I train my eyes upon the living sea, rise and fall and waves of wind, then look upon swaying grass, gone to seed and summer brown. Sees far mountains rim the coast, trees tower in silence. Bird songs flit about ocean spray and Nootka rose. Sunlight heals the eyes, water
(for Ann) Silent and beautiful, the artful earth in rising green and silver sea. I drink the free air and let her beauty soak my innards, softening stone into morning milk. Reading of
Slack tide seas mope about, then silence falls, a welcome blanket. The lure of deep water and gathering night held to the mystery I kneel to taste at the earth altar. Reading of “Held to the Mystery” with music
