A debut poetry collection, both lyrical and surprisingly playful, about overcoming a harsh evangelical upbringing and seeking consolation from the beauty of the natural world.

This collection by the author of three books of nonfiction takes readers into one man's struggle to escape the corrosive effects of a punishing religion. We meet the small, frightened boy afraid of hell-fire and eternal guilt, and decades later, the man kicking free of the habit of self-excoriation.

There is humour in the observation of the antics of birds, especially magpies and other corvids, and profound humility in the struggle to resist a confining culture.

Magpie, I love you more
for your flight and strut
than for your
squawk,
but can't vilify a creature
ten times tougher than I am
and a hell of a lot more handsome.

We walk with the poet-as-flaneur through neighbourhoods and along the river in a small prairie city, observing the incongruities, absurdities, and startling images and sounds of city life. And as the mystic who believes in something far beyond himself, so the beetle he sees on a path is "a little Buddha," and the wind and the flowing river are "irresistible forces," while a pine teaches him "how you move / without going / anywhere."

Lloyd Ratzlaff brings the prairie landscape to life through a capacious imagination charged with wonder and the gentle irony of an awareness tempered by time and love. A remarkable new talent in the burgeoning field of literary non-fiction, Ratzlaff connects with the challenges posed by scepticism and belief, countering both the cynicism and doctrinairism of contemporary life with a renewed praise of the profound depths of the spirit and the natural world. Born and raised in Saskatchewan, Ratzlaff currently makes his living as a writer in Saskatoon. He has worked as a freelance writer and columnist, a school counsellor in the Saskatoon Catholic school system, a lecturer at the University of Saskatchewan, and as a Minister at several churches in Saskatchewan and Manitoba. Both his creative non-fiction and professional pieces have been widely published throughout Canada. He lives in Saskatoon.

Lloyd Ratzlaff's profile page

Past Praise: "... the mundane made keenly relevant and the divine fully believable and grounded. Consider it narrative poetry, a collection of reflections, a series of intimate snapshots -- and find the soul of a poet and a friend within its pages." “Pacific Rim Review of Books, on Backwater Mystic Blues

Past Praise: "A keenly detailed, often lyrical exploration of love, loss, and courage." -- Saskatchewan Writers' Guild John V. Hicks Long Manuscript Awards on Bindy's Moon

Past Praise: "Bindy's Moon is exquisitely rendered. Ratzlaff's personal reflections deploy the delicate tuning of an inquisitive mind, the sober bell of experience, and the deft use of language to grapple with life's complexities and transcendent potentials." -- Saskatchewan Book Awards