In Bruce Bond's seventh book, we see a sustained exploration of mortality and its embodiment in the consolations of beauty, most notably in music.

"As if even the respite of song is action, its silence no less. Even the bend and reach of architecture that rises out of the smolder and back, even the legs of the arc that return the way the sun returns to a black well, its trespass quiet, slow, a ghost, a coin, a wish gone deep as the day grows old."

Bruce Bond teaches at the University of North Texas and is poetry editor for "American Literary Review."