While reading the work of poet/songwriter Dan Erickson, you feel like you are eavesdropping on an important conversation. Sometimes the topic, love, patience, music, the mysteries of youth and the inevitability of aging, is vital to us all as human beings. Sometimes the topic reflects anger at life's ongoing injustices, perhaps those especially reflected in our adversarial legal system that emphasizes "winning" over the pursuit of truth. Sometimes Dan's work is just full of wonder at Nature and God's work in the world. In that realm, his poems mirror a bit of the metaphysical poets and William Blake. He worries about human beings becoming mere cogs in a "civilized" machine while artistic expression, as is represented in Dan's poems and songs, becomes just something frivolous people do instead of a vital medium for ideas that cannot be expressed in any other way. Dan Erickson's work, however, is very accessible, owing to its very profoundly human yet conversational tone. I hope readers will enjoy listening to, and participating in those conversations as much as I did. Gordon Koestler,