“Come, look out over my shoulder” – This is a little book for friends to share with friends. Thirty-one poems, accompanied by luminous photographs, invite you into grand and intimate worlds where nature offers comfort and insight. Collected Into five chapters— Bird, Plant, Land, Water and Air— the poems tell stories, reveal meaning in small moments and lead from surface appearances to deeper intuitions that nurture the spirit. Issuing from the author’s personal experience, each poem is an eloquent reach toward the light that radiates universally. Susan McBride Els is an award-winning garden and landscape designer living in Vermont. With this little volume of poetry, she returns to her first love. She earned her master’s degree in Creative Thinking in Literature and the Arts from the University of Massachusetts. Soon after, her first book, "Into the A Writer’s Look at Creativity," was published by Heineman Press. Following more than a decade of freelance writing and reviewing books for Publishers Weekly, she has happily spent most of her time with plants, stone and dirt— creating garden retreats and landscapes to bring people into nature— work prompted by imagined places of refuge. Now, she happily spends most of her time with words creating another place of refuge.