In finely wrought, image-driven poems, The Empty Boat explores the spiritual and aesthetic dimensions of the human relationship to the natural world, asking how nature speaks to us and what wisdom and solace it may offer the tragic aspects of our lives. From haunting poems that give voice to losses and seek redemption in wilderness, to those that celebrate ecstatic moments of mystical vision, the book's trajectory moves ever toward Taoist landscapes of thought. The book concludes with the return of love and re-imaginings of the relationship between presence and emptiness in our lives.