In this collection, physician and life-long poet Philip W. Smith reflects on life, death, kids, nature, and science. The book contains never-before-seen poems as well as previously published works. Take a trip downstream, you never know where it may lead.
Praise for Far Downstream
"The quality of presence in Smith's poems is deeply alert. His clean, careful lines trace the quiet storms that underlie moments both inexplicably difficult and awash with unexpected grace. It's a pleasure to watch this poet fly though time, pulling together scraps of memory and history whose fresh union forms truths larger than the sum of the parts."
–Rebecca Shaw, author of Understory: A Poem and Last Night at the Blue Angel
"I've watched them both, one Phil Smith informing the other, the scientist and the artist, enacting a vibrant and original wholeness. There are many ways to heal and be healed, and Dr. Smith the Poet navigates this territory with subtlety, generosity, and love."
–Steve Langan, founder of the Seven Doctors Project and author of What It Looks Like, How It Flies
"In Far Down Stream, Phil Smith charts a lifetime's looking, the physician's trained gaze roaming from atoms to galaxies, from birth to eternity. Wonder and grief waltz here, a winning curiosity abiding through life's perilous chance and change: "Tomorrow will the bee stop in midflight," he asks, "or young lovers' eyes turn to black stone?" Answers may elude us, Smith suggests, but still we learn something vital in the asking."
–Todd Robinson, author of Mass for Shut-Ins and Note at Heart Rock