James Cervantes has taught composition and creative writing at Northern Arizona University, University of Iowa, and Arizona State University. He is presently teaching at California State University-Sacramento. His background includes service in the U.S. Airforce Orchestra as a cellist, work as a landscaper, a psychiatric aide, and a director of a non-profit organization. He is the author of two previous collections of poetry: The Fires in Oil Drums (San Pedro Press, St. David, AZ, 1980) and The Year Is Approaching Snow (W.E. Hoffstadt & Sons, Syracuse, NY, 1981). Cervantes’ sources of magic include microclimates, astrophysics, chaos, the mesas of the Southwest, and poetry itself.