The poems in John Muro's first book, In the Lilac Hour & Other Poems , move with a sure hand between closed forms (especially sonnets), invented forms, poems after writers like Keats and Frost, and free verse; and they are committed to seeing and honoring the passing of seasons, of friends and family, and to the birds and flowers that constitute the local reality of our everyday lives. Looking closely and surely at the world around him, Muro's descriptive abilities are everywhere apparent: the crack of a screen door shutting lingers "long on pneumatic air"; a pear is a "tilted Buddha"; swans are "high, heavy clouds / idly set upon the water"; cardinal flowers are "incendiary petal flare, the arching thrust / Of fireworks in descent." But the poems always widen from a series of exacting and fresh images to a wider context-the diminishing habitat of Lady Slippers or a Swainson's Thrush running up against the glass windows of a suburban house. These deft and heartfelt poems trace our connections and disconnections to nature, community, and family while amplifying and celebrating life.