Gatherest defiantly attests to intimacy and our binding humanness amidst an alienating present. In three elegant poems, brushes with contemporary violence are met with meditations on kinship and communication alongside coursing reflections on the elemental foundations that borne and ground our existence. “Daughter,” she addresses, “people are not bad / not evil / people want to be like water / and go where currents send them.” Both candid and hopeful, Steensen stares down modern anxieties, embraces vulnerability and presents empathy as an antidote to pervasive chaos.