What is the key we enter by? How is it that invisible bread sometimes arrives unbidden in the cramped of our soul's kitchen. What does it mean to be tender, a woman, alone, pregnant, uncertain of her place in the world. Is death a fearful proposition, a friend, accomplice? Amid the fields spilling into each other with the weight of her winter, comes this new life growing slow, wanting to believe the promise of summer still sings.

The poems in this collection take us on a journey through the stories of various people who must deal with loss, uncertainty, constricted lives, love stretched tight as a clothesline. They go on to follow one woman as she attempts to navigate a lonely pregnancy, keep faith, listen to the earth, help her newborn inhabit a place thick with the language of birds.