Robert King's poems ruminate and celebrate, embrace and release, laying moments of insight and feeling on our open palms like fragrant pine needles. The poet leads us from what he calls "first days" (a childhood in Omaha during WWII and then Colorado) to "last days" (wrestlings with mortality) to "these days" in the eternal Now of the natural world. King moves with ease from humor to heartbreak, often in a single poem, and his language is always fresh and clear. He has the gifts necessary to fulfill Frost's dictum that a poem "begins in delight and ends in wisdom," and readers will take great pleasure in making that journey with him.
