This is a volume of poetry. It is a showing, like paintings in a studio, or an airing of fresh musical compositions. It does not have a solitary theme, but interlaces motifs, responses, constructions and inspirations from readings, associations, the mind and the times. It takes its inception from the observation that 2007 was a harsh year. “Stage” is a complex word. It may mean theatre, and hence dramatic monologues; or a point of development as in building or human progress ̶ in this case plural; or a platform for landing or embarkation ̶ arriving or taking off; or yet an old-fashioned form of transport by coach ̶ as some of our contemporaries have taken poetry to be. The governing preposition is “by,” as denoting a medium or location, which might equally imply parody, sequence or conveyance. As in all stages, some things are of necessity incomplete, others apocryphal, and some imaginary. The poems, while they are a display, are also a journey, created, one hopes, as much by the partnership of the reader as the text.