This is a truly unique collection of poems with powerful influences from the worlds of science, ecology, animals and nature altogether. The very last poem in the book is the same as the title of the book itself and that poem, The Gravity of Love, suggests that a truly alive, strikingly powerful romance is the same as the power of the natural world: “Perhaps, where you are, / a dawn already lightens up the sky, / and all the stars I see / are suns reflecting from your eyes. / Is this not the essence / of what we call love?”

Although the book’s title suggests that this will be a collection of poems that focuses on human romance, it has very few poems that address that subject directly but it’s a fascinating view on the subject of love. The ultimate message is this: Even though love can send us spiraling into the heavens, it is also what ultimately keeps us down to earth. And what these poems reveal is how a simple walk in the woods can become a startling journey into the human mind and heart.

The link of these poems to the natural world is found in a constant reference to woods and trees of all sorts, and a continual reference in many of the poems to animals, including mammals, birds and even insects. The very first poem in the book (“The Descent of Man”) includes a reference to mares and eagles, and other poems include such things as cormorants, raccoons, carp, cheetahs, gazelles, cicadas, and loons, as well as dozens of others.

His lines that include animals are always fascinating: “Fill your pride with lions / and secretary birds / and a bouncing family of warthogs / trotting past.”

This long list of animals and other natural images in the poems reveal the author’s deep connection to the world of nature in all its forms, and the poems themselves link us to the power of the natural world. He includes poems and sections with titles like “Meditations for the Long Walk,” “Views from an Ultra-light: Woods,” “Milton Hikes the Bruce Trail,” and so on. With skill, he places the reader deep inside the natural world.

The author also has a way with language itself, giving us numerous examples of word-play. Again, in the very first poem he writes: “Come waltz with us, / twirling on horripilating updrafts, / flames finger-flicking / at our soles.”

In other cases, he uses such words and phrases as “fandangoing,” birds that are “cha-cha-chattering,” “the lake taking its own time tic-talking / at the rock.” Fascinating that he would write “tic-talking” instead of tic-tocking. Over and over, his use of word-play lends his poems a certain surprising delight.

A number of the poems also contain captivating references to various artists and musicians that spark echoes of music and art, including Van Gogh, Debussy, Descartes, Edvard Munch, Antonio Gaudi and others. And in the poem titled “A scientific investigation into the language of nature” which opens with a prose section titled “Abstract,” he writes: “We broadcast cheery greetings / into the mint-cool, fauvist sky, / the landscape silvering into a Group-of-Seven bay. / How will they respond? / Who will speak for them?” The reference to “a Group-of-Seven bay” makes the reader pause and reflect on any Group of Seven paintings one can recall.

The poems in this collection appear in eight sections, the first titled “Being Here” and the last section titled “The Gravity of Love.” One of the most striking sections is number four, which is titled “What to Be Thankful For.” The six poems in this section include the obvious ones, one that is mundane and one oddity. The obvious ones bear the following titles: “Survival,” “Trees,” “Water,” “A Sense of Wonder.” The most mundane is the final one titled “Chicken Soup.” And the odd one is titled “A Wedding Dance in the High Andes.”

Altogether, this is a collection of quite fascinating and charmingly unique poems, in the ways that our eyes are opened to the natural world. But they don’t stop there. Ultimately, these poems convince us that the depth, complexity and joy of our natural world is not outside us but is at the very depth and heart of our being. From an author with a lifetime interest in ecology and nature, ultimately these poems are permeated with earth-bound gravity.