​Readers of Patrick O'Leary's poetic science fiction and fantasy (The Gift, Door Number Three, The Impossible Bird, 51) will recognize the peculiar candor and humor and insight he brings to his first love, poetry. Selected from poems written over the course of 50 years, Obviously I love you but if I were a bird displays the gifts of a writer, as Gene Wolfe described him, "so damned human it's a wonder man-eating sharks haven't come onshore to get him."