Many poems in this collection explore the intrusions of 'the wild' into daily life,through memories, in illness, and in places that you've lost or left behind. Dougan isinterested in the ways in which the past re-enters the present, particularly through thesecrets of family life, in all kinds of atavism, and in pockets of wildness in the suburbsand the city which are a source of liveliness and a dark sort of energy. Her poemsfeature old houses, ruins, revisited places; they focus on the bonds between thegenerations, between children and adults, humans and animals, and humans and thephysical world. The title of the collection refers broadly to these ties, which impose asense of guardianship on those who are bound by them. In contrast to the wildnessthey recognise, the poems themselves seek to tread lightly they aspire to quietnessand reticence, to cumulative rather than immediate effects, and to sustaining arelatively natural and unobtrusive voice.