Rhonda Batchelor

Although it is 1969 and the end of a decade that has brought tremendous social change even in southweatern Ontario, 14-year-old Annie Ward has experienced little of "love, peace, and understanding." A diehard Beatles fan and highly intelligent but lacking in social graces, Annie is still grieving over the death of her father and also misses Zoe, the one "best" friend she ever had, who has moved away due to less-than-friendly circumstances. Lonely but proud, Annie has distanced herself from everyone, even her mother. then, amid highschool rumours of her supposed homosexuality, Annie is challenged by her guidance counsellor to confront her "problems" by writing about them. In an awkward attempt to make friends, she is drawn to a group of ragtag local hippies. One of them, Sweet William, is even more bereft than Annie, and not by choice. The 1960s may have jump-started a cultural revolution, but for many people the old prejudices are slow to let go. Still, perhaps "all you really need is love ..."

Like the shifting and often turbulent skies of our own emotional meteorology, Rhonda Batchelor's poems forecast the shifting patterns of a marriage from quiet moments of a graceful dawn to stormy seas of absence, from brilliant love-strewn sunshowers to dark moments of loss and bitter nights upon the shore. In three sections, "Backbone of the Moon", "Ghostly Dialogues" and "Still Breathing", Batchelor explores the fleeting forever trilogy of expectations, unions and releases that comprise the tidelike phases of a lover's cycle. Dedicated to respected Canadian poet Charles Lillard, Batchelor's late husband, this work keens to the notes of a personal lament but emerges triumphantly healed and ultimately blessed.