The snow hare varies the colour of its fur according to the season - effectively camouflaging itself - bu dances with all the conspicuous exuberance for which hares have long been celebrated. The poems in this collection follow the four seasons of a year - starting and ending in winter - and the hare, whenever it appears, is the image of irrepressible energy, even in the face of death.

This collection ranges geographically from England to Australia. The birds that are at teh heart of many of these poems - crimson rosella, bower bird, honeyeater, egret, swift, wren - travel across enormous distances. They provide a thematic link, rathe like a leitmotif in a song cycle.

Collectively, these poems are an elegiac meditation on the fleetingness of experience and memory, and therefore on the transience of life itself.