"The tragedy of human existence is Fate." So says novelist and poet Jonathan Lovejoy, as his thoughts open this small collection of grief and longing. Written near the end of a tumultuous 24 year marriage, these simple rhyming poems are a reflection of a love that was greatly longed for, but would remain a hopeless heart's desire.

The poems appear to echo an inner sense of missed opportunity, and the tragic passing by of a soulmate that the author met in a university hall-a chance meeting by mutual eye contact and a pricking of the heart over 20 years before, several months before he married his wife-having passed this mysterious young woman by many times over a lonely, winter landscape of a southern college campus, but resisting the urge to speak to her, unable to traverse the barrier of his own natural shyness, loneliness and isolation. Born from a lifetime of regret for what might have been, these simple exercises in rhythm and rhyme may appeal to any heart that longs for the paradise of tranquility with a loved one, and the life of love and humility they know they missed with the one who got away.