The poems in Lana Hechtman Ayers' The Autobiography of Rain explore the healing powers of art and nature in a world that is as rife with grief as it is as ripe with beauty. It is in the most stricken moments that we are most open to beauty and to the concepts of life and the infinite.

They're entwined, and only as we grow and finally mature, is the both-sided coin revealed. I am the moon's dark side Ayers writes as an adult pondering her-and our-place in this world.

Once, she dreamt of being the horizon and now she implores, ask me about the rain. How to drink it in and in and in / and never drown.

We wonder when our big moment will come as we prepare for epiphanies and actualization, but the secret truth that Ayers shares throughout The Autobiography of Rain is that big moments always come small, and every moment is available to us. We don't have to wait-Any lit wick // that brightens without / burn, suffices.

Ayers is hoping that today is the day you realize it, so you can look back the next day and remember that you, said I love you to our fragile Earth, /said I love you, I love you to the universe. "Poetry" is the answer to every question Ayers ever asked, and she implores you to save yourself / in the quiet hours / one kind word at a time.

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