Wild Flight: Walt McDonald First-Book Series

Soaring across extensive terrain, from the working world of Detroit to American suburbia and pop culture; from the European landscape of World War II to the current war in Iraq, Christine Rhein opens her personal world to the world at large. In poems that explore the historical, social, and scientific, as well as the poignant and humorous, Rhein relishes life’s juxtapositions.

from “Tuning”

I try to tune out the boom! boom! boom!
    from the shooting range two miles from my house,
          and think of the people who live next door

to the targets, or in the din of London and Berlin
     where nightingales now sing fourteen decibels louder
            to be heard by mates, quintupling the pressure

in their lungs . . . . . . Imagine
       if we could hear bread rising, dew forming, the budding
             of raspberries, the tear of a cocoon, a minnow’s pulse,

our own cells growing, dying. When my husband
         kisses my ear, I love the swoosh, the quiver, his breaths
               and driven by wind, my whispered name.