Lifelines

In these poems focused on the intricacies of love, family, self-awareness, and the cracks between dreams and waking life, Michael Miller continues to show his mastery of the human voice and heart, "the known leading to the unknown." His pom, "White Cane": One eye gone, the other a bare lifeline / To vision, he moves through a world / Of shadows, blurs, no longer / The middle-aged man assembling / His day with precision. /// Each morning he practices the walk to town, / His white cane leading the way, / The metal tip tattooing the sidewalk. /// At the corner, he feels my presence, / Asks clearly if he can take my hand, Then grips my forearm, his fingers / A human vise I do not wish to pry open. "I read Michael Miller's poems with great pleasure in their accurate seeing, their assured phrasing, their true and proportionate feeling."-Richard Wilbur