for Steve

Will it be like paragliding

gossamer takeoff, seedlike drifting down

into a sunlit, unexpected grove?

Or ski-jumpingheadlong soaring,

ski-tips piercing clouds,

crystal revelations astonishing my goggles?

. . . . Skittery flicker of a glare-weary lizard

startled into the sheltering wings of a leaf,

rusting freighter with a brimming hold

shimmering onto a crimson edge. . . .

Sad rower pushed from shore,

I'll disappear like circles summoned

by an oar's dip.

However I burn through to the next atmosphere,

let your dear face be the last thing I see. 

  Whether writing poems about North American life and landscape; or love poems; or elegies for family and friends; or poems on serious, debilitating illness and the transformations it can effectElise Partridge offers in Chameleon Hours words forged by suffering and courage. Full of wit and empathy, Partridges poems draw inspiration from sources as whimsical as tortoises and pontoons, as poignant as a homeless woman taking shelter inside a post office on a winter night, and as deeply personal as her own cancer diagnosis at a young age. Chameleon Hours is a book about the rewards of being reminded of ones own mortality and the lyric expression of life in all its intensity. Elise Partridge is a teacher and editor.  She is the author of Fielders Choice.