The poems in this collection span the 40 years in which Geoff Rips has undertaken a deeply personal attempt to understand the mystery of things. The pieces parallel his interest in the greater world and burrow deep inside his own psyche in the attempt to find meaning.

His poems include the pantheon of subjects embraced by poets through the ages—life, death, love, and family—and they discuss the natural world and the material world, reality TV shows, looking for work, traffic, the lives of window washers and hot dog vendors, the wetlands, and pelicans, plovers, and dolphins. This is the whole of life, seen by looking closely at its parts.