Surface Impressions: A Poem

American writers such as Melville, Poe, and Thoreau form a backdrop to the narrator's thoughts of his children growing up in a world of technological change foreign to their father -- "this global shopping spree we're getting to be." In addition, he considers faith as it pertains to religious belief in three generations: his own, his father's, and his children's.

At once impudent and elegiac, ironic and dignified, the voice that carries readers through this brilliant poem moves freely between the antipodes of mind and universe -- from the narrator's back porch to "the cluster of galaxies my galaxy is sitting in" -- observing, "How cliche / to acknowledge being infinitesimal in / a system that, in its own way, is infinitesimal / Can't do it; nor can you." Sandy triumphs in showing the significance, fragility, and unity of all life on earth.