'Your smile, your lovely smile / Stirs my senses, as if / Waking to the first rays of an alpine sun / On the ridge of my tent, / I enjoy a spreading warmth...Richard Smythe's imagery goes straight to the heart of what it is like to be human, simply joyful or sad, expectant or fearful, but above all to feel the natural world, in all its wonder, to be a part of oneself in life and, at the end, in one's frailty and death. His poems span a lifetime's experience of music, mountains, teaching and acting from the dark years of the 1940's listening in bed to his mother playing Chopin to the present time when he wonders himself how he himself should be recalled: 'Carve no stone to remember me by / Lest it bruise you...I would rather you / See me, feel me, like a child spreading his hands / On a couch of summer grass. Inside this slim volume the reader will find an immense variety of subjects and moods, from quiet, philosophical reflection in the Shropshire countryside to a light hearted playing with words, as in the melodramatic portrayal of the cyclical existence of the common earthworm, written to be performed from within a sleeping bag! Truly this is a book to be slipped into the pocket to provide pleasure at odd moments during a busy day.