LIFELINES is poetry by Ben Verona that speaks simply, directly, passionately, and sometimes humorously, about the human condition. This is poetry rooted in those fertile fields of human experience common to us all. LIFELINES takes a fresh and unique look at important aspects of our human condition, aspects we often lose sight of as we live in the busy circumstances of our daily lives. Much of this poetry brings us back to lost or forgotten thoughts, feelings, and experiences, refocuses them, and opens for us the door of renewed human possibilities. The poems in LIFELINES fall into five broad thematic categories, which are: -Human Condition- Human Possibilities -Open or Closed -Love and Relationships -Transcendent Experience -Wild Imaginings Wild Imaginings - is poetry that takes a fanciful look at our relationships with some of the wild things in nature with whom we share this planet. Transcendent Experience - is a category of poems that explore some of those unique life experiences capable of transporting us into that special realm of reality and experience that transcends the circumstances of our daily lives. These poems provide us with a unique look at our ability to have such transcendent experiences and open for us the possibility of enriching our lives with them. Love and Relationships - contains poems that address and explore what love is, what it means, and what it takes for us to get there. Some of this poetry explores love that loses sight of itself and causes us to treat ourselves, and our beloveds badly, and not from love at all. Open or Closed - is poetry that suggest that we are capable of being closed to anything, even love. These poems also explore the personal consequences of such closures, and refocus for us the innate ability we all have to open ourselves to love, and all of the other wonders of human experience available to us. Human Condition-Human Possibilities - is poetry that explores aspects of our human condition in the context of our experiences in the world and the events that occur around us, and that affect us physically and emotionally. In that exploration, this poetry opens for us unique portals of positive human possibility, and leaves to us the ongoing personal exploration of those possibilities. Across all categories, the poetry in LIFELINES is engaging, enlightening, thought-provoking, and entertaining. Its imagery is clear and powerful, and its humorous aspects, often subtle, are always playful, fanciful, and delightful. We, at Blue Goose Books, have published LIFELINES with the hope that you enjoy and benefit from this poetry as much as we do, and submit it to all of our readers to enjoy and experience for themselves. We appreciate and respect the highly personal and subjective nature of the experience that each individual reader has with books. We understand and appreciate that reading is an essentially interactive experience, and that each reader participates uniquely and individually in that experience. So, we present LIFELINES to our readers with that understanding, and invite their comments via e-mail at bluegoosebooks@gmail.com, or by mail to Blue Goose Books, P.O. Box 1430, Linden, NJ 07036. FORMAT: We want our books to be not only informative, enlightening and entertaining - but reader friendly, and useful. To that end, we have indexed this poetry by titles, and with opening lines; and we have included some blank note pages at the back of the book for personal use of our readers.