Various Gazes

Gazes vary as location, mood, frame of mind, and sense of identity change from day to day (or moment to moment), so my/our gazes take on different characters. In the first section, “In the garden, on the water”, the gazes reflect the natural beauty around us and a range of thoughts and emotions it can conjure. The second section, “In the world, on the streets”, shifts the gaze further outward, looking more at the social and political world and our relations with it. Political poems can become annoyingly pedantic, and I’ve tried to avoid that stance despite some strongly held convictions that will be obvious. The final section, “In memory, at the desk”, shifts the gaze to include both the inward and, in an autobiographical sense, the outer world.