The engine that drives the transformation of nature is the city, with its multiple definitions in universities, libraries and economies. It is the city that articulates how we see the wilderness at the edge or the farm in the middle. These are all city poems; thoughts struck on cobbled stones or at concrete intersections in Zürich, London, Toronto, Manhattan, or Cambridge, Mass. They are marks and remarkings of an aging life in which going to work, making a living, or striving for political power and social influence is no longer what life is about. What remains after busyness has been taken away is for poetry to explore. - from Author's Notes.