The poems in Sharon Morris' first collection are both meditations on mortality and nature, and sharp edged celebrations of life - in turn tender, incantatory, dramatic, quotidian and elegiac. The three sections describe three different places, metaphorically and geographically: in "False Spring" the poet takes us out into the open spaces, the wildernesses at the edge of the city of San Francisco, touching on the myth of Persephone. This mythic thread is carried on through 'Rome', where the city's overlaid histories parallel the tension between what is revealed and what is hidden, while the final section 'Salt of Almonds', through the image of the desert of Spain, speaks of what will persist and endure.