Sortings is a collection of poems focusing on the process of making distinctions, reflecting on life’s experiences, trying to discover and express what really mattered and continues to matter. The book explores a variety of subjects – childhood and growing up, the natural world, travel, artworks, and teaching. A major focus of this collection is the sorting through recent experiences with the poet’s mother as she traveled from the vital, funny, ironic, loving person she was, to becoming a 96-year-old elder struggling with the torments of dementia. The book has a kind of emotional coherence and a narrative arc, moving from memory to more recent subjects that inevitably link the now to the then.