Why do we love?
So we will always have someone to listen?

The house has a different feel
when two people are in it.

Even when you talk and I don't respond, I hear you.
The wave of your words laps over me.

Like weeding carefully around a plant,
it's hard work to listen --

to discern what's really being said
under the bell of the voice, under the words' polish.

If we listen to those we love, we will hear them say:
I am here next to you. We are all there is.

These beautifully made poems continue Logue's lyrical examinations begun with Discriminating Evidence, Settling, and Meticulous Attachment -- her three previous books of poetry, also published by Mid-List Press. In Discriminating Evidence we saw the poet letting go of the past. In Settling we witnessed the poet embracing the future without fear. In Meticulous Attachment we shared the poet's transcendent desire to live in the moment.

But during the last days of 2002, Logue admits she felt afraid. The world seemed unsettled, uncertain, and full of conflict. As the new year began, she resolved to write a poem a day as a way to regain her lost sense of control. Logue explains in her preface to Hand Work: "I believe that writing poems is doing good work that can change the nature of our world." Since 2003, she has carefully culled the poems she believes are "the better ones" -- her "good work" -- and offers them now as her fourth collection.