If the world's humanity had the same love, respect and connection to the animal kingdom as author Jenny Bates, 2020 would be a much different year. In Slip, Bates smiles bravely at the night because she has written a book that speaks of ignorance, happiness and exhaustion beneath a delicate light shining on empty ruins. It is an exercise in finding what Camu reveals in his own writing, (to speak) "...with a lipless mouth...learn one last time what I know." If one were to say this book is about love, sorrow, letting go, even letting go of change, the critique would be incomplete. Instead, it is about a little deaf, black pup who taught Bates,

"I am Nothing. (and) By becoming this, his true eyes became a solid ground to walk."

We would say to each other "There is Nothing like you, there was Nothing like you, and there shall be Nothing like you."

When I slipped, he let me fall then took that solid ground with him to place under another's steps.

Yet he left me able to see in that dark. '

Slip joins Bates 2019 publication, Visitations (Hermit Feathers Press) as a work of profound observation of two souls joined, though parted, will never truly slip eternal bonds.