To Gaze Upon Their Loveliness by Cara Chamberlain

Many times I have watched a red-tailed hawk and whisked a tick from a dog’s back on walks with Cara Chamberlain. She was my dog-walking companion in Billings—country roads in sub-zero weather, sandstone bluffs under summer hats, across the wind-blown prairie. I always picked her well-read brain as we traveled. On seeing a hawk or worm, she might offer something sciencey, something unusual, or some off-hand but deeply reflective, unique, and refreshing perspective. She understood that the worm was no less amazing than the hawk, that there is at least as much to admire in a tick as in a human. It was a pleasure to ponder the world with her, and now I can invite others to do the same—to “gaze upon their loveliness” with Cara.

–Lisa Kemmerer, author of Affinity

Cara Chamberlain pairs lyric poems with provocative science facts in an exploration of the sex lives of chickadees and hawks, earthworms and ants, elk and jaguars, butterflies and jellyfish. She sets before us beauty and violence, dying oceans and human greed, the lasciviousness of nature’s creatures, and a human love song to the earth, which is that of a rapist who sucks the earth dry. Fascinating, thought-provoking, haunting.

–Janine DeBaise, author of Body Language