Latter Days tells a story about the meaning of a human life in the strange new world that is emerging today.

After an initial sonnet that presents the existential challenge of the COVID-19 pandemic, it opens with The Wanderer, a view of the world from the perspective of an aging world traveler seeking a summation of his more than seventy years of wayfaring. It continues with In a Plague Season, a collection of poetic notes on the pandemic and its parallel to the changing climate of the earth. The next section, A House Divided, extends the plague metaphor to the current state of political warfare, and the following sequence, Toxic Manhood, examines the idea of maleness as a contested site at the center of the current struggle, suggesting an apocalyptic picture of a world in which the fertile union of sexuality has become obsolete.

The next section, Ars Poetica, is a turning point where the art of poetry, together with the other arts, especially music, is enlisted in a process of healing and recuperation. Poetry’s economy and wit are called in by the next section, Oeconomics, to outline a modestly contrarian political philosophy that might provide the basis for a cure. Three sections follow- Observations,
You Know Who You Are, and Valentines -that recover poetry’s sensory grasp of the world, turn to human affection as a foundation of renewed health, and celebrate a long marriage. The final section, Second Childhood, prepares the wanderer for the conclusion of his long search for meaning.