1Though none of us can predict our own futures, there are distinctive factors--individual and collective--that may forcibly turn our attention toward the uncertain. In the poems in Brightword the speaker, a mother, contemplates the microcosm and macrocosm of dissection. Physically, her son is at constant risk of a life-threatening cardiac event. Environmentally, her son is obsessed with nature and the threat of eco-catastrophes. Through lyric exchange, images become the principal of repose.