The Daunting Ephemeral explores the quirky and creative side of life, and embraces spirituality from a humanistic worldview. Pickering misappropriates the language of religion and some of its history to ask the reader if our conceptions of the divine are overly simple, and if we can embrace awe and mystery without compunction. Pickering's first full-length collection of poems also includes The Vanishing Point, a short chapbook published in 2012. The author pursues questions most people are afraid to ask: "If God exists, why do I not believe?" The Daunting Ephemeral will not answer life's mysteries, but it will provide a backdrop for curiosity, imagination, and struggle. It will ask the reader to stare deeply into the eyes of the Unknown-- and ask if it is truly the Unknown, does it truly know it is?