Written over a period of approximately twenty years, the poems in this collection are unified in a single theme--the experience of longing. The poems explore multiple expressions of longing--longing for love, for personal relationship, for youth, for beauty, for creativity, for the divine, for transcendence, for immortality--which are explored through the generous use of symbolic (sometimes theological) language, and often through images of nature. The ultimate ""thesis"" of the book is that while longing serves as the potency to carry one along the road of one's spiritual journey, it is also the last thing that must be let go of in order to reach one's destination--the last thing to be sacrificed before the heart is able to trust and to open to transcendent joy.