Patricia Clark's poems explore not only refuge but also wonder and appreciation, as well as astonishment. A number of the 56 poems collected here show her grappling with loss, especially the loss of her mother, though she isn't one to indulge in misery. Instead, she goes walking. It is the harp tree in "The Poplar Adrift" that Clark imagines giving voice to sorrow, thus sparing those who stroll by -- "all the grief that passes" becoming, in the tree's very fibers, sound on the air, a wind through branches and leaves.