Poetry. Crow it seems sent Jerry Martien to the California North Coast, by indirection, 'where to find/ the sacred groves,' and Jerry had the luck and wit to find them. His already keenly honed poetic intelligence entered into a new demanding apprenticeship to water, stones, boards, and words. Now we are given these deeply felt poems. Forceful yet sweetly subtle, ranging from public life (citizen's meetings, timber sales --Jerry pulls the coverings off shameful naked weasel words) to --Poems of: care and compassion for elders and companions including cats; lyrics of lonliness, love and family, and of the continent-edge battered by huge Pacific swells; of craft-work and of clear thought --Gary Snyder. The poem surrounds us. The poet loiters deliberately in the dooryard, maintaining cultural access to that nourishing circumstance. Speaks on behalf of that still-living, still-sacred grove, and labors to restore the springs to which we all go when thirsty --Jerry Martien, from his own introducti