""Murmuration" is the best metaphor I could think of for this collection: individual poems moving in liquid formation, linked only by the subject, himself helplessly ever-changing. Some of these poems have remained unpublished for decades, others are freshly written: all here find their place. This is the book I promised to my partner Marianne MacKinnon after her death, but spent my sweet time assembling. No one else knew of this slow-moving ambition. One day my then son-in-law told me of a dream he had had of her: "Tell John to finish my book," she commanded. What choice did I have? There is no chronology here, no narrative: a murmuration arcs and swoops as it will. Nor are the many personal remembrances and representations confined to one person-far from it. But together they are one way of seeing, one way of living. Marianne would approve."-- Provided by publisher