Although mom always liked me best, I have for all of my life been required to compete with my two brilliant brothers, Tom, who possesses degrees in both art and architecture, plies his trade in Santa Barbara and speaks fluent French, and Jim, a retired trial lawyer who has argued for nature and the environment before the Montana high courts, coached girls' basketball, and sired three overachieving daughters. I am privileged to introduce my siblings who have decided in this, the apparent twilight of our lives, to write poetry.

Something we might have learned from taking things to seriously is that we all have ourselves, artists of some kind, simply because we all have thoughts and because our witness upon things is often worth noting and sharing by means of some craft: words, paint, music, etc. When we practice something over time we tend to get good at it. My brothers have for several years both admired contemporary poets and written poetry themselves, sharing it primarily with each other. And so they have, as you might expect, become good at it. The artifacts contained in these pages are a worthy read for no other reason than they could as well have come from you. Luminous. Awestruck by a world seen through angles of though and crafted forth into pages and words.

If I were tasked to give you a benefit from enjoying these poems it might be that they will wake up your own inner poet, taking up small things, private things, and making them important. But of course good poetry sets your mind off on its own direction, so from here you are on your own.

Michael Moore