Poems on the power of memory and the shading of past into presentIn this enthralling collection, National Book Award finalist and former Poet Laureate of California Carol Muske-Dukes composes a lyrical autobiography, tracing her family history from the Dakota prairie to her new life as a young mother in Los Angeles. In "The Separator," Muske-Dukes writes of her grandfather, a wheat farmer, winnowing, threshing, planting a future in the deep black soil of Wyndmere, North Dakota. In "Biglietto d'Ingresso," she recalls a perfect day in Tuscany, spent with her future husband in a town overlooking a wine valley. "August, Los Angeles, Lullaby" is a lulling yet harrowing description of the wonder of a mother holding her newborn child--and her own fragility, encountering mortality--as a hummingbird touches the hourglass of the feeder outside the window . . . then is gone.