Cover Painting © 2004 by  Patricia Hourihan-Worth

First Printing 2004
320 pages, paper
$17.95
Higganum Hill Books
P.O. Box 666
Higganum, CT 06441
Ph:(860) 345-4103
Email: rcdebold@mindspring.com

Distributed by
Independent Publishers Group
www.ipgbook.com
Ph: (800) 888-4741

Catch the Light
Selected Poems 1963-2003

Catch the Light offers a generous selction from Douglas Worth's seven books of poems, spanning four decades and defining the artist as a refreshingly accessible, life-affirming, fashion-defying, original American poet in the tradition of Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman.

---

Comments on Douglas Worth's Poetry 1963-2003

"Douglas Worth strikes me as one of the most gifted and accomplished of younger poets." - Denise Levertov

"Avoiding the trendy Confessional, Naked, or Open modes, Worth's is a fresh vision, a different way of thinking, produced in its own achieved language." - ALA Choice

"Almost all of Worth's poems contain some fresh act of the imagination." - Richard Wilbur

"Worth's work explores the choices confronting the human species." - Boston Globe

"Mr Worth is working the hardwood loads." - A.R. Ammons

"There is nothing slight or obvious about any of these poems - but there is something clear, and clearly powerful." - ALA Booklist

"Like good wine, Douglas Worth excels with age!" - Daniel Berrigan

---

MAYBE WE HAD TO COME THIS FAR
(for Irwin)

for this meadow
to pierce us
with such a rush of green

for this faint trickle
of life at summer snowline
to remind us how precariously
crawling we are
on the thin crust of the Earth

for these woods
cool and fragrant, still
with the hush of arrival
to refresh us so, offering
streams for our kneeling, berries
more precious than jewels

for these butterflies
busy with sweetness
resting a moment
unafraid, on our hands
to seem such an honor

for us to want so urgently
to fit in
taking our place in the landscape
as creatures among creatures
turning, not back, but at last,
humbly, in praise
to the clear grace of water
the common gift of light