Downstate.

Downstate

David Gardiner

Salmon Poetry

c/o DuFour Editions

PO Box 7, Chester Springs, PA 19425

9780956128737, $21.95, www.salmonpoetry.com

In every community, there are countless bloodlines that compose that society. "Downstate" is a collection of poetry discussing people and their heritage. Author David Gardiner reflects wistfully on society and its reverence for its heritage; "Downstate" is a fine, insightful, and entertaining volume. "Plains Storm, Omaha": Around here, a truck's rumble past is/as natural as wind that rocks the porch swing in your absence.//"God doesn't give his thunder to us all."/We tell ourselves we're lucky; with our daylilies and dogwoods -//we're the stuff that survives, has roots and mind/enough not to stick our heads above neighboring flowers.//The winds, the sirens, and the early bathtimes/all fall together to make our long horizons,//hang together as front porchswing rocks/with silhouettes of wild roses waiting for the storm./The front of a life that blows in from elsewhere.