In one of her poems, Marjorie Stelmach describes a painting as "a landscape on the knife-edge of promise and peril." Her collection represents the same dichotomy, never avoiding the perils of human life within time's remorseless grip, yet reaching out toward the hope, promise, and beauty of the natural world. There is fire here, literal and emotional. Like the controlled burn she describes in places prone to wildfires, her carefully chosen words help us find ways to persist.