3:30 a man wakes up after hearing a voice. He flips on a light and searches his memory. Someone or something has sent a message that requires a response or immediate action. Reaching for pen & paper, he waits for words to begin. The texts that follow are half-conscious attempts at recognizing that these same words preceded this life and had directed it from before the beginning. Readers' Comments... Emerging from a hypnagogic state, Peterson writes of love, loss and a way home. His poems hover off-shore between land's end and the horizon. Stumbling through the pains of aging only makes the work more poignant. —Douglas Leichter, artist New York-Tucson 3:30 is terrifically dense and by turns morose, enlightening and painfully touching, many of the pieces uncomfortably surreal... —Trish Haines, Dharma disciple Hard-bitten poems of aging & loss: The man carried the death of his mother throughout his life. Add to that the loss of Margot, his lover of later years, and he wakes at 3:30, inconsolable. It takes courage to write these poems and even more to publish them, and sometimes as much to read them. —Andrew Vinca Poet on the Roof These poems speak to the uncertainty & vulnerability we experience upon waking in the pre-dawn and glimpsing up close that we're but a small cog in an unfathomable universe, and still we long for people & places we've lost. —Lisa A. Sharp, featherweight