Mario says: “I wanted to put together a book of my poems and started going through the ones I had written up to then, looking for good ones that would go together. It didn’t take long to see that I had many many poems about animals. I had no idea this was such an important theme for me, but I didn’t fight it. I came up with the title almost immediately after seeing the theme pop out at me. I could have made the book twice as big, with a lot more animal poems, but chose to include only the very best ones I had.” This collection contains “When I Was,” Mario’s most popular and often requested poem. People use it for religious rituals and it was dramatised on NPR’s To the Best of Our Knowledge. Mario drew the cover image myself, mimicking the look of the native petroglyphs gracing many of the rocks in the Columbia River Gorge. Available in these formats: print • kindle • nook • smashwords
