A debut poetry collection, both lyrical and surprisingly playful, about overcoming a harsh evangelical upbringing and seeking consolation from the beauty of the natural world. This collection by the author of three books of nonfiction takes readers into one man's struggle to escape the corrosive effects of a punishing religion. We meet the small, frightened boy afraid of hell-fire and eternal guilt, and decades later, the man kicking free of the habit of self-excoriation. There is humour in the observation of the antics of birds, especially magpies and other corvids, and profound humility in the struggle to resist a confining culture. Magpie, I love you more for your flight and strut than for your squawk, but can't vilify a creature ten times tougher than I am and a hell of a lot more handsome. We walk with the poet-as-flaneur through neighbourhoods and along the river in a small prairie city, observing the incongruities, absurdities, and startling images and sounds of city life. And as the mystic who believes in something far beyond himself, so the beetle he sees on a path is "a little Buddha," and the wind and the flowing river are "irresistible forces," while a pine teaches him "how you move / without going / anywhere."

In a series of reflections focused on his hard-working Mennonite family and touching on childhood exploits from shoplifting and go-kart racing to the fear of dying (which arises during the rehearsal for a school Christmas concert), Lloyd Ratzlaff takes readers on a journey from youth to philosophical maturity. Combining elegy and joyful nostalgia in these poetic essays, Ratzlaff recounts his youthful struggles before going on to analyze his first marriage and his time in seminary and as a minister, and examining life as the parent of adult children and confidante to a terminally ill friend. Never straying far from his spiritual probing, Ratzlaff's essays are informed by nature and the changing seasons which influence his life in seemingly magical ways. Small enlightenments arise from interactions with the natural world, ranging from a spring equinox on the seventh anniversary of his father's death to the author's waking to the songs of a robin who comes each spring to live on the riverbank across St. Henry Avenue. Even a small gopher scurrying off and standing like a signpost between graves prompts an exploration of mortality. Humour and honesty define this spiritual journey, as the boy who grew up speaking an ethnically Mennonite language discovers that the rigidity and unease of this tongue will become, in part, the catalyst for his own writing and an impetus to spiritual movement. Bindy's Moon invites readers to explore the challenges posed by scepticism and the simultaneous desire to believe, weighing the gravity of doctrinairism against the spirit's boundless energy. Ratzlaff offers a unique example of what many others have experienced, combining humour and quiet reflection in a poignant prairie coming-of-age autobiography.