<p><em>A Hundred Million Years of Nectar Dances</em> is a poetry cycle of singular beauty in nature and reveals an inherent Buddhist quality. Jarrette’s poems are clear and meditative, unfailingly beautiful. They are self-aware but not self-obsessed, singing with the ecstatic humility of a mystic or shaman as they join all the subjects of a life well lived within nature that is ever present. The poems dance and sing and play and rest with their subjects to present a truly beautiful vision of the world. The ending poem, “The Pond,” is perfectly representative of all the others before it, and yet its impressive scope doesn’t rob any glory from what precedes it. The poems create their own world where they solve their own problems, build memories, and speak to each other. Richard Jarrette’s book is a manifestation of the inherent conversation between human nature and the wild around us that sustains indivisible mutual integrity and ceases at our peril.</p><p></p>