The poetry of this book was not planned. It is the result of many nights and days and too many years. Therefore, there is no running theme. Many times, a poem woke me in the middle of the night, got me out of bed to find paper and pencil. I wrote until I fell asleep again and started the revisions the next day. Other poems took a long time, often hidden within a word or a line I scribbled when it appeared. When I could no longer resist, revision after revision painfully brought it to its present state of completion. Each poem was an encounter with some memory from my past or an emotional encounter with something I had no control over. Some friends complained that some of the poems are not complete for them. Incompleteness is a problem, both for listeners and the writer, but there comes a place where the author can’t move the poem farther than it wants to go. My hope is that if any reader is stopped in his tracks by my poetry, this will spur them to do something different and better for themselves. I just hope that the emotions are real and raw enough to carry each reader to a place within their own emotional baggage, where nothing else, so far, has taken them.