If Only There Were Stations of the Air

"If only there were stations of the air is an outcry against human vulnerability and ephemerality: our occupancy of a tiny speck in a universe incomprehensibly vast (and itself not necessarily eternal), and without the comforts of Heaven or Providence; our subjection to change, chance, contagion, catastrophe, cancer, and the loneliness and isolation of remorseless age. Yet the cry comes from the heart of love: of our blithe everyday ordinary happiness in our fragile homes and towns, of the richness of experience we have built up in our minds and hearts, of the beauty and solace of the perishable natural world; and especially, love of people and animals, living and dead-and, most of all, love of our intimate human partners whom we almost weep to have for fear of inevitable loss. The poet's voice records it all: taking quarantine comfort in the company of a bird trilling at 3 A.M.; terrified and saddened by the assault of threatening illness; calmed-when sleep doesn't come-by other human voices in their poems; soft-talking the self with the hope of survival, of living on, able to remember and commemorate"--