With subtlety and directness these haiku illuminate again and again the astonishing realities of the world and consciousness itself. Whether in the yearning of a windchime, or the hunger to realize the patience of a tree readers of Only This Step will find that these poems open the mind to new ways of seeing and experiencing. In an introductory essay to haiku, former United States Poet Laureate, Billy Collins wrote this about the nature of this form: ". . . flat definitions fall well short of accounting for haiku's mysterious power to cause in the reader's consciousness a sudden shift, literally a new way of seeing." Philip Kenney's haiku in Only This Step fulfill the nature of that promise.