The Good Bacteria

the long version

"Sharon Thesen gives us a layered meditation on energy and endings: the irrepressible energy of life, and the end of everything - the natural world, home, love, youth, safety, all we understand to be familiar. In a sequence of poems on a wildfire that denudes hills around her home and forces an evacuation, Thesen marries these preoccupations. She captures beauty at the periphery of things: a neighbour's yellow dress, a tube of Polysporin, a blue-and-white tin awning that an observer momentarily mistakes for a lake. Thesen's voice reminds us of the spiritual yearning that can surprise any of us, even in our most mundane moments."--Jacket.