Transit

A beloved nature poet reflects on environmental change, political transformation, and the ineluctable fact of aging.

We are all human and nonhuman on the move. The poems in Transit emerge from just such a walk through the world. In keenly observed verse, David Baker carries us across physical and emotional geographies, moving seamlessly from deep woods, city streets, and creek beds to the contours of his psyche and the larger cultural circumstances that mark off our lives. Several of the poems operate as field notes, drawn from Baker’s work assessing bird migrations, streamflow, and geological movements alongside environmental scientists.

Because of his ecological orientation, Baker’s work is also grounded in a deep sense of home, which is captured in the double meaning of the collection’s title. Each piece in the collection acts like the eyepiece of a surveyor’s transit—a finely tuned short-range telescope, intricately balanced and calibrated to survey the surrounding geography.

Through this lens, Baker pays studied attention to the topographies of the world around us and the terrain of the heart. Both an imaginative point of departure and a love letter to familiar places, Transit poses poignant questions about what we seek as we find our way through the world.