Cynthia West says, "As a poet, I travel a different map, one with sand traps and tunnels that lead to clouds mirrored in mountain pools. Writing with pen and paper is my way of heeding the wordless ones who have much to teach us. When morning light sighs in the leaves, green veins gather water beyond ideas of line and form. My hand is a nameless bird, dropping feathers that point to distances and depths. The lake which disappears at the touch, emerges, reflects. Sometimes the stanzas breach like whales, huge upheavals that leap, swallow the sun, then plunge, full of light, to the depths."