A familiar imagery-free of conscious symbolism-is woven into the fabric of these texts: beaches, shells, ships, tides keenly observed; the play of light as day passes into night, or from night to day; as winter moves toward spring and spring to summer and autumn. Places like Key West, or Proust's fictional Combray, appear side by side: motifs, among others, in a tapestry peopled with human figures encountered along the way of the 'we, ' the elusive lovers who, wiser than Dante's Paolo and Francesca, will read 'on and on.' Love is at the center of the poet's itinerary. One feels the presence of a keen and unflinching 'eye' within the text, and withal an 'I' gentle and compassionate in a deeply humane way