Sledding the Valley of the Shadow - Laura Foley

These supple, melodious poems address mortality with humor and wit, "smacked/ like a mackerel onto the deck/ of the unknowable," as the speaker loses family and friends, survives her own heart event and surgery, and takes care of her wife as she undergoes cancer treatment during the Coronavirus pandemic. Employing spare, vivid language, she practices appreciation, empathy and compassion-for self and others, across political aisles and species-and the acceptance of the imperfect as the perfect lesson, as welcome or necessary steps to wisdom, slipping and sliding a flash-lit, joyful, snowy way to an abiding gratitude.