The journey begins with the first poem in this collection titled, ‘The Crossing.’ We are brought along the street to experience the anonymity of the first soul trekking namelessly through St. John’s in the wet, desolate streets of Portland and we glimpse, ever so briefly, as nature and abandonment intersect.

Once we move through this collection, we begin to notice that Mimi has placed the reader in the poems too. In, ‘The Other Side of the Coffee Shop Window,’ the title has already pointed out the ‘otherness’ that the writer requires you to notice and understand. The imagery that is employed in this poem places the reader in the position of observer and the observed. Looking out the window, ‘lyrids stroke a paper fire’ and the reader is left wondering and knowing that the stars in the sky, ‘the turn aways’ and the ‘crash of cosmic degrees’ are incorporated into all of us through nature.

Admittedly, it may be tempting to assume that this collection is only concerned with nature or houselessness and that would be a fine assumption, but then we would be missing the whole picture. Mimi doesn’t stop here though. This collection shines as she peels back the layers, the meaning for a glimpse of our world as it truly appears. For example, in ‘To Beggar’ the opening line sets the tone for the poem, ‘blueberries fall like dislodged stars’ and we eat up the words that are dropped from Mimi’s pen. The person in this poem is houseless, gathering what they need, all the while being ignored and then we are reminded that the beggar is nature and that is where Mimi’s poetic genius comes into play.

This collection’s last poem, ‘He,’ incorporates everything Mimi’s poetry encompasses. The first line begins with, ‘the fray floats the ground like an unhoused child,’ and the ethereal blur of where nature, poetry, and the political, merge. Make no mistake, Mimi German is a master of language and nature poetry but her absolute magic shines through when we glimpse at her political philosophy. She has taken her time and talent to write down the connection between three of the most important aspects of our world through this work. And now we hear, ‘somewhere a broken violin slurs,’ but it sounds like the stars and poetry.