Why read poetry? We are inundated with words every waking hour: shouting, coaxing, warning, lying words hurled around as if there were an inexhaustible supply. Poetry supplies the antidote: small, precise pieces of writing in which every word is considered and weighed for its meaning, its rightness. This collection of 40 poems includes childhood memories, reflections on times and places, some angry words about the worst of us and some humour. There is no theme, no linking narrative, just a series of concise works that seek to evoke feelings and images without bludgeoning the reader into submission. The writer is a retired academic whose career in the sciences was an excellent training ground for poetry, as it too requires precise use of the right words in the right order.