By Matt Rader. Nightwood Editions, 80 pp, $16.95, softcover.

Miraculous Hours by local poet Matt Rader constructs a series of solid images and then takes them apart to see what makes them tick. It's hard to believe this is Rader's first book: he has been on the scene organizing readings and publishing chapbooks for years. Luckily, he launched this book at least three times in Vancouver alone, so perhaps he's making a new kind of presence known.

The opening "Exodus" is like a novel written in 18 couplets-there is a strong attention to narrative, an affinity for story:

Dad curses the corroded flashlight batteries. The scent

of manure and freshwater. My mother gets out

of the truck, places her hands on the hood,

fingers the dirty heat from the engine. Tonight,

I am due to be born. On the horizon, two columns

of light approach. Mum holds out her thumb.

A story of origins, Miraculous Hours displays Rader's tendency to go back and write from the beginning. The overall story of this book, though, is often placed within the gap between city and nature, which are sometimes the same space. In "The City Through the Treetops", "the harbour freighters scrape into place and the clouds in the/rafters/shift and articulate."

The merger of cityscape with a more natural environment isn't clichéd in this case; it's more about tracing the influence of the industrial in a very personal sense. Still, Rader's use of specific details cuts through the nostalgia you would typically find at the centre of such a drama. The poet has the ability to see strange things, the quirky unseen details that might be difficult to mention. He isn't afraid to voice these strange events in poems. In "Firesetter" he writes: "There is language in the click of a lighter, an epiphany in a blister of skin." He finds language and stories in the strangest places. He documents that continuing sensual edge between the bright light and the burn.