About this book

One thing that distinguishes cultures is that each has its own set of myths, unverifiable ideas that have been handed down and that inform its actions.

I don’t have an unfavorable opinion of any myth that causes no harm.

I confess that no grand scheme determined the order of chapters. I chose subjects of poems, too, only on the basis of what interested me at the time. Each chapter area offered many stories and characters that I choose not to write about. In itself, my choices signal neither approval nor disapproval. Therefore, rather than seeing these chapters as a way to honor or dishonor other traditions, I hope you see them as my own fantasies about them.

I drew the cover illustration in pen and pencil, depicting Buddhist monks in saffron robes, to illustrate the concept of altruism.

Links and shortcuts

In any page, you can click on or touch links to jump around in this book.

• Each entry in the contents links to the poem.
• The title for a poem links back to the contents, highlighting the entry for the poem.
• Words in the headers and footers link to the index, the contents, a listing of books by the author, to this page, and to the previous and next poems in the book.

You may find the following keyboard equivalents to be convenient. Here I use the symbol ⌥ for the option key on Mac/OS or the alt key on Windows, ⇧ for the shift key, and ⏎ for the return (enter) key. Arrow keys are ◄ (left), ► (right), ▲ (up), and ▼ (down).

Keyboard shortcuts for navigating this book

Context	Keys	Jump to / Behavior
cover	⌥ ◄	Books by Tom Sharp
	⌥ ▲	About Tom Sharp
	⌥ ►	about this book (this page)
	⌥ ▼	contents
	⇧ ⌥ ▼	contents
contents	⇧ ⌥ ▲	cover
	⌥ ▼	select the next item in the contents
	⌥ ▲	select the previous item in the contents
	⌥ ►	open the selected page
	⌥ ⏎	open the selected page
poem	⇧ ⌥ ▲	contents
	⌥ ◄	contents
	⌥ ▲	select the previous poem, or, from the top poem, open the previous page
	⌥ ▼	select the next poem, or, from the bottom poem, open the next page

The poet

Tom Sharp is a Native American of Aleut heritage, a member of Seldovia Village Tribe. He is the author of numerous books, including Spectacles: A Sampler of Poems and Prose, Taurean Horn Press (ISBN 0-931552-10-9), a novel, Hans and the Clock (ISBN 979-8580172484), The book of science, SciFi (ISBN 979-8694935210), Things People Do (ISBN 979-8687425568), The book of beliefs (ISBN 979-8683553593), The I Ching (ISBN 979-8573510620), Images (ISBN 979-8577560515), Aleut Artifacts (ISBN 979-8575608998), Aleut Words (ISBN 979-8582103394), and First Nations (ISBN 979-8682924769).

You may email tom/AT/liztomsharp/DOT/-c-o-m-/ to share comments on this work.