Paula Sayword's full-length book of poems, Canticle of Light and Dark, takes us on a journey of memory and imagination. From our individual search for meaning in a world where so many of us have lost our way, to the highs and depths of love and loss, what we find in these pages are truth, hope and a kind of grace. Sayword writes of childhood's longing, of the complexities of lesbian life and search for things that matter. We also hear the experience of men forever changed by war and the author's own terrible grief over her granddaughter's heroin addiction and death. These are poems of mud flats and western creeks, of a woman taking a train across her lost and beloved America and finally poems of faith and healing. As poet Terry Martin says, ..".these are poems you will remember long after closing the book."